Ingrid would have none of it. “Guzzo — leave the cart by the door and take the attitude with you… rövhål!”
The man stopped in his tracks, staring hard at Jessica. “What did you call me?”
“Me? No, it was—”
“It was me, lard ass,” Ingrid cried out, “and I called you an asshole! Since my English is sometimes not so good, I will spell it out for you. A-s-s…”
Benedict Guzzo exited the apartment, slamming the door.
“Ingrid, that was very rude of you. It’s only my first day and already someone dislikes me.”
“He was jealous; I could see it in his eyes. Just like those girls in middle school. Go and eat; I will put on some music that will soothe you.”
Jessica stepped out on to the balcony, attacking her meal. Within minutes she had devoured the main course, using chunks of warm garlic bread to mop up the remains of lump crabmeat and sauce. She was about to start in on the chocolate crème brûlée when she realized why the waiter had taken an attitude with her.
There is no Ingrid. Everything she says is an extension of my thoughts.
She looked back at the living room smart glass. The image of her nanny was nodding at her.
“Virtual concierge, remove Ingrid!”
The dark smart glass went blank.
“No more images of people unless I verbally command it. Acknowledge command by shooting three fireworks over the lagoon.”
A lone rose-red flame arced into the dark heavens, igniting into a pink, green, and blue blast of color over the water.
Nice.
“Leave the Tahiti setting; it might be nice to wake up to. Oh, and have Raul finish drawing me a hot bath… with the oil beads.”
She smiled. “Dress him in something… revealing.”
17
“Welcome to our meditation circle… does everyone have their circle buddy?”
Adam sat shivering in a folding chair, seeking warmth from an old wool sweater and a tattered baseball cap he had borrowed from Dr. Greer. They were situated in a six-acre clearing surrounded by woods, a good two hundred yards from the house. Wrapping his legs in a wool blanket, the Under Secretary of Defense now realized what the other twenty-two paying guests already knew — that there was a big difference in dressing for the weather and dressing for prolonged exposure to the weather.
Emily Greer had attempted to warn him. “I realize it’s August, but it gets very cold out there. If you’re going to join the group then we’ll need to dress you in something warmer. Let me see if I can find you an old pair of Steven’s long johns and—”
“—That won’t be necessary. I Googled tonight’s local forecast; it’ll be a balmy 62-degrees Fahrenheit. I doubt we’ll see any UFOs with all this fog, but weather-wise I’ll be fine.”
“The skies will clear around ten when the temperatures drop. Unless the group goes on break, you’ll be stuck out there, and Steven gets very perturbed when his meditation circle is broken. At least bring a blanket.”
Adam glanced up at the cloud-choked heavens. As predicted, he could feel the temperature dropping, a few patches of stars slowly starting to appear. They hadn’t even begun yet and his teeth were already chattering.
Asshole. You should have listened to Greer and stayed inside to watch the damn baseball game instead of insisting on tagging along on this snipe hunt.
“Mr. Shariak, I’m your circle buddy. You okay?”
Adam glanced to his right where a woman in her mid-thirties — her name tag identifying her as Leslie Ann Mahurin from Park Hills, Missouri — was adjusting the volume on a machine emitting a rapid de-do-de-do-de-do sound.
“Missouri… the ‘Show Me’ state. What exactly is that thing?”
She smiled. “This is a laser detector. I’m running a battery test. If it starts making that sound once we begin, it means an ET craft may be vectoring in.”
“Vectoring in on what exactly?”
“The group’s consciousness. Dr. Greer will explain.”
The guests had begun arriving around six-fifteen, the CE-5 orientation meeting set to begin at eight. Plastic tags were worn on lanyards around their necks, identifying each person and their city and country of origin. The farthest trek belonged to a brother and sister team who had traveled from New Zealand. A married French couple in their thirties hailed from Paris, an older woman and her younger female companion had flown in from Munich, Germany, and he managed a short conversation with a heavyset Briton bundled in an orange parka. The others were from the States. A third of the guests had been on at least one CE-5 expedition before, Greer matching up each veteran with a pair of excited “newbies.”
Adam stuck out like a sore thumb.
Greer had warned him. “These people were vetted before their applications were accepted; those who made it put in a lot of time and effort to get here. They were given instructions and a manual to study which included a waiver that allows me to dismiss them for any action or attitude that does not fit in with CE-5 protocol.”
“What kind of attitude?”
“Anything one might describe as self-serving. We’re here to welcome our ET ambassadors, Mr. Shariak, not to exploit them. If they sense the latter, they won’t join us.”
“How often do these ETs actually show up?”
“Every CE-5 expedition is different. Ultimately, the outcome is determined by the consciousness of the group. If I sense your presence to be a disturbance, I’ll ask you to leave… and not just the circle, but my home.”
A cold wind whipped across the field, howling through the surrounding woods.
Adam looked up as their leader took center stage, the surrounding darkness pierced by sporadic blips of blue and green lights coming from an assortment of electronic devices held by guests within the circle.
“Good evening. A few basic rules before we begin. There’s no smoking and please refrain from eating or drinking when we go into our meditation sessions. We’ll take a bathroom break in a few hours, but if you have to go there are plenty of trees nearby. If you must go, please do your best not to disturb other people in the circle.
“We’re positioned in a circle so the group has eyes on every direction. If you see something, you need to alert the group by calling out its location using a direction and degree of elevation. The horizon is zero degrees, straight up in the sky is ninety, so halfway in between would be forty-five degrees. As for directions, the house is to the east, the woods to my left, therefore, are west… then north and south. We also have northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest. It’s okay to lay your head back and watch the sky, but we have a no snoring rule… if someone falls asleep and starts snoring their neighbors must wake them.”
Removing a laser pointer from his jacket pocket, he turned it on, directing its powerful emerald-green light at a patch of star-filled sky overhead. “As you can see this laser is quite powerful, with a range that extends some 200 miles into space. I’m always careful not to use it whenever planes are around. It’s not just a pointer; it is also one of our tools of communication. I remember the first night we used it. We were in the foothills of New Mexico when I flashed the laser at what I assumed was a satellite. The object flashed back at us before dematerializing into a cigar-shaped craft. It remained visible almost ten seconds before vanishing.”
Using his laser, Greer traced a circle around two stars. “You can’t quite see the entire constellation because of these clouds, but these two stars are part of the Big Dipper and they always point to Polaris, the North Star. Using our navigation points, we’d describe Polaris as what… about thirty degrees northeast. Everyone understand?