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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Science Fiction
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 05/12/2015
ALIEN CLAIRVOYANCE
Born 1969, M, from Herten, NRW, GermanyThe luscious scent of chocolate filled the house that morning. It meandered up the stairs and into the bedroom and made me smile. I even detected the sweet sounds of Mozart's 43rd Symphony. Through the nearly closed curtains, I saw daylight peek through. A few sunrays caressed my vision and provided me with childhood memories. I remembered sweet breakfasts on a pateo overlooking the countryside. I remembered home.
Sweden. Summer. Carefree laughter on the frolicsome meadow. Monopoly games in the living room. Midnight snacks and ball games. Grandma making chocolate crumb cakes. My mother setting the table. Me, reading comic books under the covers, sneaking in the candybar that I brought with me from the fridge the night before.
Candescent like the sugar cane from the old corner drugstore and more seductive than a sea of honey coated biscuits, my grandmother's light chatter awoke a need in me to shuffle down and rediscover what had inspired me back then.
I hadn't felt the soft texture of the red carpets on the staircase for decades. It felt sacred and touching. My small bare feet loafed down to see a woman who had been dead for twenty years in my time. The chatter approached my audial reality and now I could hear what they spoke about. Me.
"Claudio has always been clairvoyant, mother," my mom told my grandma. "We have to start trusting that."
There were light slammings of plates and what sounded like cups being pulled out of the cupboard.
"What does that mean, Dierdre? I mean, can the boy see into the future? Is he a time traveller?"
By now, I had positioned myself on the third stair from the middle. I listened intently to what they were saying. I did my best not to be heard, which wasn't easy. My hands rested firmly on my lap, my unusually small lap clad only by soft cotton pyjamas decorated by ducks and bears.
"Think back, boy," I thought to myself. "Where did you fall asleep last? Or better: when?"
I couldn't let them notice me. If I did, I might have trouble returning back to my own time.
"Claudio?"
My mom's commanding voice raised to get me down for breakfast had me shooting up from the stair I sat on. I almost lost my pants in the process.
"Get up, honey," she continued. "Dad will be back with fresh bread in a moment."
"Did you let him sleep in the big bed last night?" my grandma inquiered just I tiptoed up the stairs.
Right, I thought, I had woken up in the bed of my parents. I had probably left my bed sometime around two at night for the safer haven that was my parents bed.
Okay. I had to think this through. My mom had noticed that I was clairvoyant. Obviously, it had been a topic of conversation already. She had said: "We have to start trusting that."
Start trusting that.
That would mean that it already had been an issue in the Laccisaglia household.
The first time I had foretold the future was what? 1986? Yes. 1986. I had been 7 at the time. What was I now? 8?
"Claudio?"
Oh, no.
I had to figure out when my clairvoyance had gotten out of hand. Had I been 14? 15? Maybe even 16?
No, I had been 14.
Mirror. I had to find one.
My playroom. The big closet had one.
"Claudio?"
Oh, no.
"Where are you?"
Quickly.
All these familiar things. My Star Wars Laser Gun, my dinosaur collection, my lego city and me.
My Lord, was I ever this small? It felt weird being a child. I quickly wandered up to my mirror and looked at the innocent unwrinkled face that I used to have. So unhurt, unspoiled the hard winds and spiritual winds of life.
Like I was accustomed, I closed my eyes shut so tight that it hurt my face. I imagined a place: Italy. A time: 1993, I was 14 years old. The light sippered in through my eyes. The flash and flicker and orgasm of the lightning got more intense and in a second I was somewhere else.
The summer we didn't travel to my Swedish grandma's house in Kalmar. The year my mom tutored literature students at the Webster University in Rome and my Italian father spent most of his time working on that damn bestseller.
Me? I spent most of my time either in my room listening to my Nirvana record "In Utero" or building that strange spaceship out of plywood and plastic and tin foil.
1993.
My father's voice screaming voice.
"Damn it, Peter," he said, "turn off that ugly music. I can't concentrate. I still don't know what is supposed to be revolutionary about it. It's just noise. Peter?"
Damn. Quick. I couldn't let my dad see me.
I just had to answer him. That would be okay.
"I'm turning it off, daddy," I said, hiding behind my bed and pulling out the electric plug. Kurt Cobain's doomed voice dwindled down, the vinyl record slowing down and coming to a weird growling halt.
"Turn off the record player the normal way, son," my dad grumbled, "that thing cost a lot of money."
"Okay," I hollared.
"Just have another chapter to write, big guy," my father said in his usual self-confident Italian-American voice. "Then I'll take you for a pizza down at Corleone's. Molto bravo, mio amico?"
"Bravissimo!" I answered, hoping I would not be discovered here in my corner. If my dad saw me here I would literally be stuck back in time. The aliens had told me that much.
Okay, where was I? My dad was working on his chapter. I had turned off my Nirvana record. That meant I had avoided the huge fight we had that sent him out of the house and me into the arms of those creatures.
Now, wait a minute. I remembered that the aliens arrived fifteen minutes after our fight ended. The fight lasted only three minutes, but it destroyed my life. I got so involved in that alien thing that it totally consumed me. My inborn clairvoyance got out of hand. My abilities were used and abused by secret agents and aliens alike until one day I woke up in a mental institution. That alien was back one day, telling me I could undo the past by using my clairvoyance to travel back to the day when that spaceship had returned to offer me a collaboration.
I remembered it well. They told me how I could use my abilities to foresee the future decisions of political leaders in order to create an alien government.
They alien in my time told me. I could change my life. All I had to do was go back and say no the second time around. My life would turn out differently.
I sat there, my little body transformed into what it had been back in 1993. The first step behind me, I now faced a much greater challenge. Sticking around long enough to say no to the aliens.
I stood up, gently walking through my old room, past my Nirvana and The Cure LPs. My Marilyn Manson poster. My painting of the Grand Canyon that never quite fit with the rest of the decorum. That and my space ship.
I knelt down and looked at it, feeling the black surface of its triangular shape with my adolescent hands. Fresh glue. Fresh tin foil. Fresh plywood. Made all after the memory I had of how the UFO had looked. Triangular. Oval on top. Flat bottom. Six spotlights in back. Like a flying car without wheels.
Today I was making contact.
"Peter?"
I looked over to the door leading to my father's office. There he stood, tranquil, younger, his hair still black, his favorite white Camel shirt still white.
"Hey, kid?"
I could feel my heart beating faster, increased pulse, cold sweat. I saw myself stuck here or maybe even doomed to experience this whole thing over again. On the one hand, my soul swam in a feeling of triumph over seeing my dad again, successful, young, thin, happy. On the other hand, I felt like screaming at him to go away. I could be here for good now.
"Uuh, hi, Dad," I trembled. I could feel myself panic, trying to close my eyes and rethink myself back to square one or to where I had been a moment ago.
It didn't work.
When I opened my eyes, my dad was still there, smiling, looking at me and probably wondering what was going on.
"Come on, Peter," he began, "I'm taking a break for you. Your favorite pizza, Salami Pepperoni. It's waiting for you at Corleone's."
Something clicked in me. I don't know what it was. But I looked into my father's eyes and saw something I had not seen before. Whatever it was, it was different. A harshness that my father never possessed. That and the fact that I could not tolerate spicy foods.
Slowly, I stood up. Not only did I fear that I would be stuck here. I also feared that this was not my father.
"You know that my favorite pizza is a Margherita, Dad," I said, backing toward the stereo.
"Oh, yes," my father said, smiling. "Right."
"What's my favorite soft-drink, Dad?"
The person that claimed to be my father would know. He would not make a mistake about this.
"Coke," my father mused.
"Do I drink a lot of coke, Dad?" I asked.
My father nodded. "Fair amount."
Now I felt like testing him.
"What kind? Coke or Coke Light?"
"Coke, of course," he answered. "Who drinks Coke Light?"
I shook my head frenetically, waving my hands about. Not only was I stuck here in this time frame, something even more sinister lurked in the dimensional shadows.
I threw myself against the record player, banged my fist against the plastic and screamed: "You're not my father!"
The creature that posed as my dad laughed. "Now, what makes you say that?"
That gaze, I recognized it. Where had I seen that look before?
From behind my supposed father, I saw another person appearing in the doorway.
"Claudio," the person said. "I came back to see you. Why are you screaming?"
In my mother's body, I saw something whose aura seemed stranger than fiction and more static than electricity.
"You're not my mother," I shouted, "my mother is teaching in Rome. My dad wouldn't say that my favorite drink is a coke when I am a damn diabetic."
"Look," the creature chuckled. "You always liked cakes and chocolate."
"I became a diabetic when I was twelve," I cackled. "Who are you people? You taught me how to go back in time just to fool me back into working to put you people in power. Get me back to my mental instition."
The light that appeared from outside the window appeared just when I remembered that it had: fifteen minutes after my father left the house screaming at me to shove that damn music into Nirvana's asshole.
Now, I supposed that I had changed that reality, but who knew that for sure?
The extreme intensity of that light had me hold my hands in front of my eyes. It actually threw me down, away from the stereo and onto the floor. Had I looked into the light, well, then I would have lost my eyesight.
So, accordingly, I did the only thing possible. I turned away from the light.
It was then that I saw the the two beings that had posed as my parents now slowly morphing into their real form. These silvery tall beings had no trouble looking into the light. In fact, they stared into it, their eyes open, transfixed by the authority of some supreme physical being.
Out of the blue, in a flash, the boyhood room of the Tuscany house that once was turned into a veritable conglomerate of rainbow colored lights. They would have amused me just as much as the had last time, if it hadn't been for the fear of getting caught in that trap of working for the government as an alien conspirator again.
Through the open.window the alien boss again arrived, just like he had decades ago in my time. His terrifying persona imposed on me just as compulsively as he once had. I looked into the dark eyes of that creature and saw my own hell.
Now, the tall creature stretched forth his willing claw and let his sharp, sharp nails flutter in front of my face. I gazed back at.the beings that used to my parents and saw expectancy. I gazed back at the alien boss, his claw inviting me to make the same mistake once again.
"Peter," a telepathic voice boomed into my head like an audial catapult, actually giving my ears and brain a seriously hard time to cope. "We have noticed you. Your mental abilities are above normal. Are you ready to take on the assignment as a master of clairvoyance? You will receive a high reward in the political game of global alien rule."
Suddenly I remembered why I had taken on the assignment at all. I had only wanted to get back at my father. Once I jumped on the ship, however, I had reached the point of no return. The total abuse of mental clairvoyance turned mean. I remember infiltrating political leaders to fly into a tall building under an assumed name sometime in 2001 just to make money for the weapons industry. It was meant to confuse humanity, rip them apart and pave the way for the aliens.
This time, I looked into the eyes of the alien boss and saw the same creature that had sat next to my bed in the mental institution in the future.
"This is a darned vicious circle," I spat. "How many times have I been here? I mean," I corrected, "have I travelled back to meet myself more than once?"
Now, the alien boss and his two totally transformed stooges, who had been acting their parts as my parents for a short moment in time, chuckled. The chuckle turned into a laugh and the laugh turned into a bellow.
"Endlessly," the boss mused. "I believe you call it Pandora's Box. You see, we are extra-dimensional creatures who only come when we are called. We live in what you would call the fifth dimension. It's a parallel reality. We kept escorting you to your own doom in that institution, knowing that you one day would let us go."
"When?"
"When what, Peter?"
"Do I let you go?"
"Are you ready to let us go now?"
"I'm terrified."
"It's okay to be afraid," the alien boss replied. Now I felt genuine kindness emanating from the alien's heart.
The grown man in the 14 year old body that I used to have realized that my psychic abilities had become a serious problem once I realized there was more to discover.
"Who are you, really?"
"We live in another reality," he said. "Your proverbial tentacles brought you so far down into the pit you didn't really know how to find your way out."
"Did I summon you?"
"You did," he said. "Or you did, in a way. When you walked into the magic cave that was your clairvoyance you walked deeper and deeper and found yourself lost. You find yourself really meeting yourself at the end. You have come full circle. Let go. Don't be afraid to let go of your clairvoyancy or the aliens you summoned. Close Pandora's Box."
I don't know how or when I let go of my fear. I don't even know why I had held on to my psychic abilities in the first place. Maybe because I had feared cataclysm and bad things happening so much that I used my extra sensory abilities as a kind of a crutch in order to eliminate uncertainties. So, in a way, I kept the vicious circle going just to find a way to predict the future. It was like the bomb expert that tried so hard and long to disarm a bomb that he set it off.
"I'm letting you go," I whispered to the alien boss and his two assistants, hoping that my real parents would replace them. "I will not be offering you my services anymore. You can leave!"
Now, something weird happened. I saw the alien go back into the ship and disappear. Not only that. His two alien stooges, who for a few moments had posed as my folks, lift off the ground and disintergrated into little puffs of what looked like fairy dust. It was as if my entire clairvoyant work for the government ceased to exist. I looked at this entire scene with spectacular awe. My pain disappeared. My entire clairvoyance, in fact, went to rest. It was there, okay, but dormant. And that was okay, too.
Now, I expected to experience my subsequent life in fast forward and end up in my mental instition, neurosis and all. I even closed my eyes to send myself back to the future. It didn't work. Well, of course not. I had given up my psychic abilities, in a way, just to get peace of mind.
In time I learned to accept the fact that I was reliving my life. Maybe I had expected that and not admitted it to myself. Maybe not. I don't know.
Fact of the matter is that I got to do far better things the second time around. I finished my high school diploma, I got a college degree in English literature. I learned to play the piano, which is something I use when I play in my big band. Most of all, I'm happily married and the father of three great children.
Nobody knows that this is my second life as me. I console myself with the fact that I can pick and choose what I want now.
Sometimes I look up at the sky and look for UFOs. But as soon as I see something suspicious, I look away and lean across to kiss my family.
After all, I don't want to be enrolled into promoting the alien government.
One thing is weird, though. In the reality I experienced the second time around 9/11 never happened, Iraq and Afghanistan was never attacked, the Egyptian revolution never got under way. Our president is not Obama. Our president is William MacLaren. I am not sure, but he is implementing laws that are harsher than what I experienced the first time around. Theft is now, in my alternate reality, punished with death.
Most terrifying are the pictures. The logo of the new government security department has a face that very much resembles the face of the alien boss.
I am happy.
Nevertheless, I wonder.
My own withdrawal from the alien conspiracy made it possible for it to become reality.
So, now I look up toward the skies. I am calling the alien boss again. Maybe I can save the world the third time around.
Once again, I am opening Pandora's Box.
ALIEN CLAIRVOYANCE(Charles E.J. Moulton)
The luscious scent of chocolate filled the house that morning. It meandered up the stairs and into the bedroom and made me smile. I even detected the sweet sounds of Mozart's 43rd Symphony. Through the nearly closed curtains, I saw daylight peek through. A few sunrays caressed my vision and provided me with childhood memories. I remembered sweet breakfasts on a pateo overlooking the countryside. I remembered home.
Sweden. Summer. Carefree laughter on the frolicsome meadow. Monopoly games in the living room. Midnight snacks and ball games. Grandma making chocolate crumb cakes. My mother setting the table. Me, reading comic books under the covers, sneaking in the candybar that I brought with me from the fridge the night before.
Candescent like the sugar cane from the old corner drugstore and more seductive than a sea of honey coated biscuits, my grandmother's light chatter awoke a need in me to shuffle down and rediscover what had inspired me back then.
I hadn't felt the soft texture of the red carpets on the staircase for decades. It felt sacred and touching. My small bare feet loafed down to see a woman who had been dead for twenty years in my time. The chatter approached my audial reality and now I could hear what they spoke about. Me.
"Claudio has always been clairvoyant, mother," my mom told my grandma. "We have to start trusting that."
There were light slammings of plates and what sounded like cups being pulled out of the cupboard.
"What does that mean, Dierdre? I mean, can the boy see into the future? Is he a time traveller?"
By now, I had positioned myself on the third stair from the middle. I listened intently to what they were saying. I did my best not to be heard, which wasn't easy. My hands rested firmly on my lap, my unusually small lap clad only by soft cotton pyjamas decorated by ducks and bears.
"Think back, boy," I thought to myself. "Where did you fall asleep last? Or better: when?"
I couldn't let them notice me. If I did, I might have trouble returning back to my own time.
"Claudio?"
My mom's commanding voice raised to get me down for breakfast had me shooting up from the stair I sat on. I almost lost my pants in the process.
"Get up, honey," she continued. "Dad will be back with fresh bread in a moment."
"Did you let him sleep in the big bed last night?" my grandma inquiered just I tiptoed up the stairs.
Right, I thought, I had woken up in the bed of my parents. I had probably left my bed sometime around two at night for the safer haven that was my parents bed.
Okay. I had to think this through. My mom had noticed that I was clairvoyant. Obviously, it had been a topic of conversation already. She had said: "We have to start trusting that."
Start trusting that.
That would mean that it already had been an issue in the Laccisaglia household.
The first time I had foretold the future was what? 1986? Yes. 1986. I had been 7 at the time. What was I now? 8?
"Claudio?"
Oh, no.
I had to figure out when my clairvoyance had gotten out of hand. Had I been 14? 15? Maybe even 16?
No, I had been 14.
Mirror. I had to find one.
My playroom. The big closet had one.
"Claudio?"
Oh, no.
"Where are you?"
Quickly.
All these familiar things. My Star Wars Laser Gun, my dinosaur collection, my lego city and me.
My Lord, was I ever this small? It felt weird being a child. I quickly wandered up to my mirror and looked at the innocent unwrinkled face that I used to have. So unhurt, unspoiled the hard winds and spiritual winds of life.
Like I was accustomed, I closed my eyes shut so tight that it hurt my face. I imagined a place: Italy. A time: 1993, I was 14 years old. The light sippered in through my eyes. The flash and flicker and orgasm of the lightning got more intense and in a second I was somewhere else.
The summer we didn't travel to my Swedish grandma's house in Kalmar. The year my mom tutored literature students at the Webster University in Rome and my Italian father spent most of his time working on that damn bestseller.
Me? I spent most of my time either in my room listening to my Nirvana record "In Utero" or building that strange spaceship out of plywood and plastic and tin foil.
1993.
My father's voice screaming voice.
"Damn it, Peter," he said, "turn off that ugly music. I can't concentrate. I still don't know what is supposed to be revolutionary about it. It's just noise. Peter?"
Damn. Quick. I couldn't let my dad see me.
I just had to answer him. That would be okay.
"I'm turning it off, daddy," I said, hiding behind my bed and pulling out the electric plug. Kurt Cobain's doomed voice dwindled down, the vinyl record slowing down and coming to a weird growling halt.
"Turn off the record player the normal way, son," my dad grumbled, "that thing cost a lot of money."
"Okay," I hollared.
"Just have another chapter to write, big guy," my father said in his usual self-confident Italian-American voice. "Then I'll take you for a pizza down at Corleone's. Molto bravo, mio amico?"
"Bravissimo!" I answered, hoping I would not be discovered here in my corner. If my dad saw me here I would literally be stuck back in time. The aliens had told me that much.
Okay, where was I? My dad was working on his chapter. I had turned off my Nirvana record. That meant I had avoided the huge fight we had that sent him out of the house and me into the arms of those creatures.
Now, wait a minute. I remembered that the aliens arrived fifteen minutes after our fight ended. The fight lasted only three minutes, but it destroyed my life. I got so involved in that alien thing that it totally consumed me. My inborn clairvoyance got out of hand. My abilities were used and abused by secret agents and aliens alike until one day I woke up in a mental institution. That alien was back one day, telling me I could undo the past by using my clairvoyance to travel back to the day when that spaceship had returned to offer me a collaboration.
I remembered it well. They told me how I could use my abilities to foresee the future decisions of political leaders in order to create an alien government.
They alien in my time told me. I could change my life. All I had to do was go back and say no the second time around. My life would turn out differently.
I sat there, my little body transformed into what it had been back in 1993. The first step behind me, I now faced a much greater challenge. Sticking around long enough to say no to the aliens.
I stood up, gently walking through my old room, past my Nirvana and The Cure LPs. My Marilyn Manson poster. My painting of the Grand Canyon that never quite fit with the rest of the decorum. That and my space ship.
I knelt down and looked at it, feeling the black surface of its triangular shape with my adolescent hands. Fresh glue. Fresh tin foil. Fresh plywood. Made all after the memory I had of how the UFO had looked. Triangular. Oval on top. Flat bottom. Six spotlights in back. Like a flying car without wheels.
Today I was making contact.
"Peter?"
I looked over to the door leading to my father's office. There he stood, tranquil, younger, his hair still black, his favorite white Camel shirt still white.
"Hey, kid?"
I could feel my heart beating faster, increased pulse, cold sweat. I saw myself stuck here or maybe even doomed to experience this whole thing over again. On the one hand, my soul swam in a feeling of triumph over seeing my dad again, successful, young, thin, happy. On the other hand, I felt like screaming at him to go away. I could be here for good now.
"Uuh, hi, Dad," I trembled. I could feel myself panic, trying to close my eyes and rethink myself back to square one or to where I had been a moment ago.
It didn't work.
When I opened my eyes, my dad was still there, smiling, looking at me and probably wondering what was going on.
"Come on, Peter," he began, "I'm taking a break for you. Your favorite pizza, Salami Pepperoni. It's waiting for you at Corleone's."
Something clicked in me. I don't know what it was. But I looked into my father's eyes and saw something I had not seen before. Whatever it was, it was different. A harshness that my father never possessed. That and the fact that I could not tolerate spicy foods.
Slowly, I stood up. Not only did I fear that I would be stuck here. I also feared that this was not my father.
"You know that my favorite pizza is a Margherita, Dad," I said, backing toward the stereo.
"Oh, yes," my father said, smiling. "Right."
"What's my favorite soft-drink, Dad?"
The person that claimed to be my father would know. He would not make a mistake about this.
"Coke," my father mused.
"Do I drink a lot of coke, Dad?" I asked.
My father nodded. "Fair amount."
Now I felt like testing him.
"What kind? Coke or Coke Light?"
"Coke, of course," he answered. "Who drinks Coke Light?"
I shook my head frenetically, waving my hands about. Not only was I stuck here in this time frame, something even more sinister lurked in the dimensional shadows.
I threw myself against the record player, banged my fist against the plastic and screamed: "You're not my father!"
The creature that posed as my dad laughed. "Now, what makes you say that?"
That gaze, I recognized it. Where had I seen that look before?
From behind my supposed father, I saw another person appearing in the doorway.
"Claudio," the person said. "I came back to see you. Why are you screaming?"
In my mother's body, I saw something whose aura seemed stranger than fiction and more static than electricity.
"You're not my mother," I shouted, "my mother is teaching in Rome. My dad wouldn't say that my favorite drink is a coke when I am a damn diabetic."
"Look," the creature chuckled. "You always liked cakes and chocolate."
"I became a diabetic when I was twelve," I cackled. "Who are you people? You taught me how to go back in time just to fool me back into working to put you people in power. Get me back to my mental instition."
The light that appeared from outside the window appeared just when I remembered that it had: fifteen minutes after my father left the house screaming at me to shove that damn music into Nirvana's asshole.
Now, I supposed that I had changed that reality, but who knew that for sure?
The extreme intensity of that light had me hold my hands in front of my eyes. It actually threw me down, away from the stereo and onto the floor. Had I looked into the light, well, then I would have lost my eyesight.
So, accordingly, I did the only thing possible. I turned away from the light.
It was then that I saw the the two beings that had posed as my parents now slowly morphing into their real form. These silvery tall beings had no trouble looking into the light. In fact, they stared into it, their eyes open, transfixed by the authority of some supreme physical being.
Out of the blue, in a flash, the boyhood room of the Tuscany house that once was turned into a veritable conglomerate of rainbow colored lights. They would have amused me just as much as the had last time, if it hadn't been for the fear of getting caught in that trap of working for the government as an alien conspirator again.
Through the open.window the alien boss again arrived, just like he had decades ago in my time. His terrifying persona imposed on me just as compulsively as he once had. I looked into the dark eyes of that creature and saw my own hell.
Now, the tall creature stretched forth his willing claw and let his sharp, sharp nails flutter in front of my face. I gazed back at.the beings that used to my parents and saw expectancy. I gazed back at the alien boss, his claw inviting me to make the same mistake once again.
"Peter," a telepathic voice boomed into my head like an audial catapult, actually giving my ears and brain a seriously hard time to cope. "We have noticed you. Your mental abilities are above normal. Are you ready to take on the assignment as a master of clairvoyance? You will receive a high reward in the political game of global alien rule."
Suddenly I remembered why I had taken on the assignment at all. I had only wanted to get back at my father. Once I jumped on the ship, however, I had reached the point of no return. The total abuse of mental clairvoyance turned mean. I remember infiltrating political leaders to fly into a tall building under an assumed name sometime in 2001 just to make money for the weapons industry. It was meant to confuse humanity, rip them apart and pave the way for the aliens.
This time, I looked into the eyes of the alien boss and saw the same creature that had sat next to my bed in the mental institution in the future.
"This is a darned vicious circle," I spat. "How many times have I been here? I mean," I corrected, "have I travelled back to meet myself more than once?"
Now, the alien boss and his two totally transformed stooges, who had been acting their parts as my parents for a short moment in time, chuckled. The chuckle turned into a laugh and the laugh turned into a bellow.
"Endlessly," the boss mused. "I believe you call it Pandora's Box. You see, we are extra-dimensional creatures who only come when we are called. We live in what you would call the fifth dimension. It's a parallel reality. We kept escorting you to your own doom in that institution, knowing that you one day would let us go."
"When?"
"When what, Peter?"
"Do I let you go?"
"Are you ready to let us go now?"
"I'm terrified."
"It's okay to be afraid," the alien boss replied. Now I felt genuine kindness emanating from the alien's heart.
The grown man in the 14 year old body that I used to have realized that my psychic abilities had become a serious problem once I realized there was more to discover.
"Who are you, really?"
"We live in another reality," he said. "Your proverbial tentacles brought you so far down into the pit you didn't really know how to find your way out."
"Did I summon you?"
"You did," he said. "Or you did, in a way. When you walked into the magic cave that was your clairvoyance you walked deeper and deeper and found yourself lost. You find yourself really meeting yourself at the end. You have come full circle. Let go. Don't be afraid to let go of your clairvoyancy or the aliens you summoned. Close Pandora's Box."
I don't know how or when I let go of my fear. I don't even know why I had held on to my psychic abilities in the first place. Maybe because I had feared cataclysm and bad things happening so much that I used my extra sensory abilities as a kind of a crutch in order to eliminate uncertainties. So, in a way, I kept the vicious circle going just to find a way to predict the future. It was like the bomb expert that tried so hard and long to disarm a bomb that he set it off.
"I'm letting you go," I whispered to the alien boss and his two assistants, hoping that my real parents would replace them. "I will not be offering you my services anymore. You can leave!"
Now, something weird happened. I saw the alien go back into the ship and disappear. Not only that. His two alien stooges, who for a few moments had posed as my folks, lift off the ground and disintergrated into little puffs of what looked like fairy dust. It was as if my entire clairvoyant work for the government ceased to exist. I looked at this entire scene with spectacular awe. My pain disappeared. My entire clairvoyance, in fact, went to rest. It was there, okay, but dormant. And that was okay, too.
Now, I expected to experience my subsequent life in fast forward and end up in my mental instition, neurosis and all. I even closed my eyes to send myself back to the future. It didn't work. Well, of course not. I had given up my psychic abilities, in a way, just to get peace of mind.
In time I learned to accept the fact that I was reliving my life. Maybe I had expected that and not admitted it to myself. Maybe not. I don't know.
Fact of the matter is that I got to do far better things the second time around. I finished my high school diploma, I got a college degree in English literature. I learned to play the piano, which is something I use when I play in my big band. Most of all, I'm happily married and the father of three great children.
Nobody knows that this is my second life as me. I console myself with the fact that I can pick and choose what I want now.
Sometimes I look up at the sky and look for UFOs. But as soon as I see something suspicious, I look away and lean across to kiss my family.
After all, I don't want to be enrolled into promoting the alien government.
One thing is weird, though. In the reality I experienced the second time around 9/11 never happened, Iraq and Afghanistan was never attacked, the Egyptian revolution never got under way. Our president is not Obama. Our president is William MacLaren. I am not sure, but he is implementing laws that are harsher than what I experienced the first time around. Theft is now, in my alternate reality, punished with death.
Most terrifying are the pictures. The logo of the new government security department has a face that very much resembles the face of the alien boss.
I am happy.
Nevertheless, I wonder.
My own withdrawal from the alien conspiracy made it possible for it to become reality.
So, now I look up toward the skies. I am calling the alien boss again. Maybe I can save the world the third time around.
Once again, I am opening Pandora's Box.
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