Make IT Real! - Sander R.B.E. Beals (self help books to read .txt) 📗

most of his hard-earned cash on trips to all parts of the world. And now I, who seldom travel, have hit the proverbial jackpot! We talk for a while, and I promise to share with him our photos and movies, so diligently collected by Jane.

Then, Kayim's communicator beeps. Valerie rushes to answer it, and is told to take us all to the transporter room again. As we enter, the familiar glass container shaped like Kayim has just materialized. With everyone and Jane's camera looking on, the strange container starts to fill up, bottom to top. What happens next surprises us: instead of dissolving like it has done earlier, the glass shell fragments into a million pieces! “Oops”, Kayim says: “I moved to soon....” He explains, that if you move before the materialization process has entirely completed, the shell breaks up instead of being properly cleaned up. Nothing serious though, just a bit messy.

After that, Gaween takes us back to the spaceport again, which already has its large door open. Despite that we can still stand in the hangar, because a force field keeps the atmosphere inside. We board our disc just as soon as LeeYooh joins us. A swift vertical takeoff makes Gaween disappear into nothingness, and we are on our way home. “Can't we knock that deep bird out of the sky?”, Jane asks. She is a little fighter, always wanting to make things better. LeeYooh makes it clear to her: “We could have done that quite easily, but we are not going to. As long as they think their toys are OK, they regard their work as routine, if we disturb that they will start paying attention”. Jane suddenly sees the light: “That makes sense, I hadn't thought of that”.

Our trip back is quite routine too, with the exception that we enter Inner Earth through the South Pole entrance. I wonder how they could ever have hidden these giant holes, but Gina assures me that they did. Apparently those in power absolutely don't want the general public to know about their friends from within. I wonder what waves my next book is going to create.....

4444AD, Day 288, 09:32, Home

“Morning Bro!” I greet Ernesto as he walks up the driveway. Milly, our ubiquitous computer system had warned me someone was coming, and had even dispatched one of her insect cams to show me who it was. Thus, I could welcome my brother with an open door and similar arms. “I'd rather hug that little lady of yours”, Ernesto can't neglect to tell me. “You'll get your chance”, I reply: “She's in the kitchen making us coffee”. Selina must feel quite dwarfed, with two such huge fellas towering over her. She gives him a hug, and a mug. “Here's your coffee”, she adds. Mine is next, and armed thus we can retreat to the workshop, except Selina. She is taking the transporter to her sister who lives in Armenia. I kiss her goodbye, and watch her transporter trail disappear behind her.

“What are we going to do to the Laverda?”, Ernesto asks. “We have to fit it with a torque generator”, I reply: “that way we can safely and cleanly take it on the road.” We start work right away, because the entire engine block will have to be removed for easy access to the crank shaft. ”Don't forget the zerograv pads”, Ernesto warns me. I take them out of their holder on the tool rack, and tack one to either side of the engine block. That way, the whole block will weigh virtually nothing, and our toes will be safe from being crushed by a few dozen kilograms of 21st century technology. With the last bolt gone, the block floats away from its moorings. Ernesto grabs it, and moves it over to the work bench, where we have one of the robot arms secure it in place. A big gulp of my half chilled coffee, and I pick up a universal screwdriver to loosen the screws of the crank casing. Universal screwdrivers don't really transfer power to the screw head by physical contact, but through a highly focused, very local force field. Never will screws become mutilated by slipping screwdrivers, although some may become beheaded: that's just the direct result of an android's powerful hand yielding that screwdriver.

Next we loosen the pistons, to be able to remove the crank shaft, followed by the pistons. “We're going to do it the simple way”, I suggest. Ernesto knows immediately what I mean: leave the pistons out, and mount the torque generator in the place of the crank shaft. With the cavity exposed, I aim the lidar scanner into it, to take its exact measurement for the support struts. The measurements for the torque generator are already on file, so a simple design merge will dictate the dimensions for the struts. The composite molder then makes them while we go get another mug of coffee.

“Have you got that twin thing set up completely yet?”, Ernesto asks. I kept him informed, so he was aware of our tweaking activities. I tell him it is about ninety percent done, but he interrupts me: “I figured it'd not be complete yet, because my brother back in the 21st century never did have her as a lady friend, as far as I remember.” We are brothers both here and in the 21st century, something that is quite common in reincarnation, where souls are intimately entangled.

We install the struts, and then the torque generator on top of that. It is perfectly aligned, so we bolt the crank casing shut, but not before I make a small hole to feed the power lines through. Those will be attached to a speed regulator which will take its cues from the original gas handle. It will also control the synthesizer that will make the completely custom made engine sound.

By about lunchtime we complete the conversion, and push the Snaefell-Laverda outside for a test drive. We decide to do lunch first, and leave the engine out in the sun, shining and red. While I make us lunch, I ask Ernesto to have a look at that ancient laptop, because he is even more knowledgeable than me when it comes to 21st century hardware. Ernesto has brought freshly baked buns, and I cut them open to stack a copious amount of old cheese and ham on them. A few slices of tomato on top, and our lunch is ready. I take it to the study, and ask him how he is doing. The laptop revealed nothing of interest, but the memory card had given Ernesto cause to submit it to some more fancy examination.

“One of the JPG files was not showing properly, and its size was way too large for a JPG file. So I tried a few other extensions, and could finally get it to be processed as an MPG file”, Ernesto explains. Together we watch it, to see what it had to say....

It was weird to see how much my past self looked like me, despite the gap of 2.5 millennia. Thinking back, I remember how he'd had the same when encountering a portrait of Nostradamus, drawn under hypnosis. He was convinced he'd been involved in Nostradamus' life back then. But now I had to watch him speech, apparently to me.

“I you are watching this, I just know your sharp mind has led you to this message, like I'm expecting it will. I left enough clues, just like you left me enough clues. And I must thank you from the very essence of my heart, for our joint plan worked!” As my past self spoke these words, the object of his deepest desires walked into the scene, and put her hands on his shoulders. He'd been sitting down, so as to apparently lessen the height difference between them two. They briefly kissed, and he continued: “Everything seems to have turned out for the best, the home you found this in is currently being built, and you obviously saw Selina's blessed condition. We'll be proud and loving parents before the month is over. Well, actually even before that....” and with these words, two young ladies entered the scene and took their places on either side of the happy couple. “Thank you, whenever you are!!!”, were their last joint words.

“Well, that's it, you apparently did it.” Ernesto congratulates me. “Or at least I will do it in the future...”, I remind him. “Ah yes, if we change our mind about the past, the past changes.” That seems an appropriate line to get back to more pressing matters, like the test drive with the Snaefell-Laverda.

It stands there, gleaming in the lovely afternoon Sun. “I've got tabs on the bike!” Ernesto beats me to it. Thus, I'll have to try and squeeze into the sidecar, which is more of a kiddies sports car anyway. I open the door, and look inside. No way my six foot six muscular body is going to fit inside that cramped space. We deliberate, and decided to just take turns riding it solo.

“Can I volunteer?”, comes a cheerful voice from the house. It is Selina, returned in a timely fashion from her sister. “Sure, hop right in”, Ernesto gestures her to take the sidecar seat. She fits perfectly. I watch them leave, and figure I'll have to play back my video logs tonight, to isolate a few nice images for my brother, as if he couldn't do the same from a first person perspective. But sometimes it's fun to see yourself from the point of view of another.

I stand there in the Sun, which shines onto my back and head to remind me of the comfortable warmth of the Cosmos which is always present. Knowing my brother, he'll thoroughly test it, so I may just as well read some more......

'Cleanup Detail'

We stayed overnight at Exteria, in a place that had the nicest beds. After a delightful night's sleep, and a hearty breakfast, we board the floater again. Us outlanders seem to have made an agreement, and all look at Kayim at the same time. He notices, and knows exactly what the real question is: “Today, we're cleaning up!” He won't say any more, but flies us over the woods to what looks like a mine. Far from abandoned, it is literally crawling with activity. Not people, but mechanical devices of every imaginable make and model. “Because of the activity down there, and the nature of the stuff they work with, we can't go down”, Kayim explains. He goes on to tell about how this site is right beneath one of the biggest radioactive waste dumps in the United States. The good old Americans went totally out of their way to bury the stuff where they thought it would harm no one anymore. Then, the moment their backs are turned, the little helpers down here will burrow up towards the deposits, and remove the lot. Back in here, the waste of the surface dwellers is then converted to clean and healthy energy without using the nuclear fission technology that made the stuff in the first place.

“Apart from energy, the process also produces a substance resembling crude oil.”, Kayim says, thereby raising Valerie's eyebrows: “But in here you don't use oil, what do you do with it?” Her boyfriend explains, that the substance is injected back into the Earth, to replace all the crude oil that our fellow men are pumping out of there by the millions of gallons. “So you are even helping us by replenishing the oil reserves?”, Jane asks. Kayim smiles, and tells her to hold the admiration. Instead, the injections are done to help Mother Earth: her tectonic plates are greased by the oil, and thus injecting more oil means less severe earthquakes. “So you are helping us, just not in the way I thought”, is Jane's triumphant conclusion.

According to Kayim, there are dozens of these cleanup operations, and some even venture into the outside world. One team