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  I woke up before Ian, and got up carefully, without making any noise.

  I went to see what time it was. It was past eleven in the morning, which surprised me since it didn’t feel like I’d slept that much.

  “I must be more tired than I realized,” I thought.

  I went to the dining room and raised the blinds slowly. A strong light was coming in the window.

  I sat on the sofa with my legs crossed in lotus position and closed my eyes. I needed a few minutes with myself, realign my ideas and above all, clarify my feelings. I breathed deeply and kept the air in my lungs. In doing that, the image of the self-angelical figure emerged in my mind like a flash. It was so beautiful...I felt blinded and dazed by his presence, well—now his memory—a memory so true to reality that it made my heart start beating fast again. This time I noted with great detail the reaction he caused in my physical body: indescribable.

  I took another slow, deep breath through my nose, held it for a few seconds, and then little by little exhaled the restlessness from my interior. I repeated the exercise four or five more times until I felt completely relaxed. I centered solely on my breath and it worked for a little bit. But when I let down my guard, another scene emerged in my head. This time the moving image of Ian went from showing me his smile to approaching me sensually to kiss me. I blushed at that memory and my heart started beating fast again. It was clear I had strong feelings for him, something I’d tried to control for many years of my life.

  Irrelevantly, I started to see the photo in my office, where we were celebrating Eric’s birthday. That day Ian had been particularly attentive with me, though I’d say that more than attentive, what he was doing was insinuating...if my brother hadn’t been there, I think something would have happened between us that night. But I never knew if his sudden and open show of interest was due to an excessive intake of alcohol, some episode of transient madness, or whether he really liked me. In any case, in the middle of the night, both he and my brother started acting in a strange and evasive way, and after looking for them for awhile, I realized they had left without saying good-bye, without saying anything to me.

  The next few days, the absence of both was remarkable. I understood that my brother had noticed our flirtation and he was serious and distant. He tried his best to make excuses for Ian not to come to the house, so he would not come near me. Was he really keeping us from seeing each other?

  Soon after that was the accident, and for different reasons, in the end they both disappeared completely.

  I felt a little creak in the wood of the corridor. I opened my eyes wide and my heart began to beat strongly. Could it be that the being from last night had returned?

  Will I wake up in my astral body? was the first thought I had. However, a new, more logical thought based on the theory of Occam’s Razor, led me to think of something more plausible and common, more likely to be true.

  “Ian,” I reflected, “must have got up.”

  And he was awake, looking for me through the house. He peeked into the dining room, and seeing me meditating, tried to be quiet and go back to the bedroom. But that subtlety didn’t help much. I’d already heard him and the simple fact of relating that little noise to the experience of the previous night took me completely out of my introspection.

  “Ian?” I asked.

  After a couple of seconds, his head peeked through the doorway leaving the rest of his body hidden.

  “Good morning,” he answered. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “Don’t worry, I was just finishing,” I lied.

  I felt a small awkward silence. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted with him and I didn’t know how he felt about me, either. If I invited him to breakfast, I was afraid of spending the whole day together, and above all, I needed time to consider and reorganize my ideas and feelings. There had been a lot of emotions in just a few hours and I wasn’t used to that. My life was very quiet, even monotonous before those two appeared, and for some strange reason I couldn’t begin to understand, they both had awakened very strong feelings and a physical attraction that was hard to control.

  “I’m supposed to meet a friend at one,” I lied again. “We’re going to look for a party dress for her, she has a wedding,” I explained.

  Ian was still at the threshold, scrutinizing me closely. I knew that part of him was trying to figure out if what I had told him was a cover to get away from him. As he still didn’t answer, I went ahead, just to say something.

  “So if you want, we can get some breakfast and then go,” but it backfired on me.

  “You want me to go with you?” he asked, surprised.

  “No,” I answered bluntly, and a little nervously. “I mean, you probably have things to do, too. Maybe you’re meeting your mother or someone.”

  “My mother?” he said, even more surprised. “Why would I be meeting my mother?”

  “I don’t know!” I wanted that meaningless conversation to end. I was getting nervous.

  “Don’t worry,” he said laughing. “I’m going to be busy, too, I’ve got a lot of boxes to unpack.”

  That answer caused a sigh of relief.

  “Great,” I agreed, returning the smile. “That way you’ll be occupied for a few days,” I thought.

  It isn’t that I wanted to get rid of Ian, but it seemed to be moving very fast. The best thing would be to talk to him if I didn’t want misunderstandings, but of course, I had to be clear myself first...

  I kept my distance as much as I could so that he wouldn’t have the occasion to kiss me again, though I must admit that part of me fervently wished he would.

  A bit later, after having breakfast together, I started getting ready for my fictitious date. He did the same. After a few minutes, we were both ready to leave.

  “You’ve been very quiet all morning,” Ian noted delicately.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve been thinking about some things,” I said honestly.

  “If it bothered you that I stayed last night or that I kissed you, I’m sorry.” His words sounded sincere. I realized that after my cold and somewhat distant reaction, his head must also be spinning and, knowing him, he was probably now more confused than I was.

  “No, it didn’t bother me,” I hurriedly assured him. It was true that I loved that he stayed to sleep with me, and of course, that he kissed me, but it wasn’t the only exciting thing that happened that night. “It’s just that I’m a little distracted and thinking about other things.” I went back to unscrupulously lying. About other things? What other things could I be thinking about that wasn’t him and my coveted ‘being of light’?

  “You seem distant and I don’t remember you being that way before.” His voice was calm but his gestures conveyed concern.

  “Really, don’t worry, I’m okay. I’m just a little distracted.”

  My last answer seemed to reassure him a little more and he didn’t say anything more. He picked up the clothes he’d slept in, folded them, and placed them carefully in his bag. I grabbed a jacket and my purse and waited for him at the front of the house.

  “I’m ready,” I said, calling from the entry.

  “I’m coming!”

  A second later, he was at my side. He dropped his bag on the floor and without giving me time to react, he put his hand on my neck and brushed my cheek with his finger. I noticed how the expression on my face hardened in surprise while my eyes opened widely. My pulse accelerated.

  “What does he want? Haven’t the hints been clear enough?” I thought to myself.

  He fixed his gaze on mine, enjoying the touch. I felt my body become petrified. It was impossible to move a single muscle, as if hypnotized. Fortunately, the heart beats mechanically...his pupils were examining my face quickly, from my eyes to my lips, back to my eyes, my cheekbones, and back to my lips.

  He looked at me for a few seconds until finally he slowly leaned towards me and kissed me on the cheek. A soft, slow, tender kiss. He enjoyed it, resting his face against mine. I
could smell him. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I was so comfortable there by his side that for a few moments I felt guilty that my head was so messed up. An involuntary act inside made me lean my face against his and for a moment, I wanted to turn and kiss him. But I stopped myself. I ducked my head to avoid meeting that pair of emerald ocher crystals that were so beautiful and tempting to me. I knew if I hadn’t done it that way I wouldn’t have been able to avoid being carried away by the attraction that had been awakened in me. At last he slowly released me.

  “I’m glad I came back,” his words were heartfelt. We were both happy to have met again. He leaned over and picked up his sports bag.

  “I’m glad, too,” I confessed.

  Neither of us said anything on the way to his car. A few feet away, he pressed the button on the remote control and it sounded like the car doors unlocked. He went to the trunk and dropped in his bag.

  “Let’s talk?” he asked with some doubt.

  “Sure, text whenever you want.” He smiled as he lowered his gaze, like a blushing child.

  He opened the car door and put one foot inside.

  “Have fun with your friend.” His look and smile were captivating.

  “Thank you,” I replied, in full performance. “Have fun moving.”

  “Very funny,” he laughed.

  “If you hadn’t left...” escaped me. “Well, I need to get going.” I added something uncomfortable and dissembling, and turned, ready to leave.

  “Okay. Like I said, have fun,” he answered.

  I took a deep breath, and without knowing why, before leaving I went up to him and kissed him briefly on his full lips. Then I turned around and started walking. I didn’t want to look back. I knew that if I did, it could lead to my downfall.

  Chapter 7

  The Mission

  I reflected on what had happened at dawn on Earth. The images I projected on the contactees would be stored in their unconscious and subconscious minds, as if they were part of a dream. All they had to do is wake up to transform the real experience into a dream memory. Of course, they wouldn’t remember it all, just the part strictly necessary so that they could interpret the new signals that we were transmitting to them. That was the last astral projection of the unconscious approach in phase one with that group of humans before going into a phase two contact with all of them. In the end, it seemed that the visits went according to plan ... all except one. I did not understand it very well but there had been a mishap with a human—with Aumnox.

  That setback, if it could be called that, was a little disconcerting. I’d never run into anything like that before. In all the years I’d been in charge of that assignment, none of the contactees had ever had a reaction of that kind, or if they had, I didn’t know about it. I wondered if maintaining the plan of contact with her would jeopardize the mission.

  “They’ll know about it up at the command post,” I reflected.

  Without thinking too much harder about it, and before meeting Alixarc, my superior in command, in the cockpit, I went to the Readjustment Room, an indispensable procedure after an encounter with the earthlings. We used those facilities to readjust our frequencies, both when bringing a foreigner to our bases, and when there was something we wanted to understand about our own state and evolution, and also to rebalance our energy after contact with beings of a different consciousness and vibratory condition. The room aligned all of our bodies: physical, energetic, mental, astral, karmic, and dimensional, into a single balanced and harmonic vibration. From there we could project ourselves to other spaces, to other places, other times and dimensions and engage in contact with different intelligences and realities.

  That room had a natural, living luminosity, like that emitted by a celestial body. There were no shadows, since the circular space was diaphanous and the walls, floor, and ceiling emitted their own flame, as if it were a warm sun. It made for a more comfortable space. The lighting was self-regulating depending on the need or desire of the guest who was using it. At the time I was using it, the emission was dim. Those conditions allowed me to observe more clearly the impact of my actions, relive experiences and analyze them from different perspectives, as if I were in a three dimensional projection of maximum detail, what we called visual recreation.

  And there I was, with the aim of readjusting after the last astral visit, but above all to meditate and analyze whether I could have made some mistake, however uncommon it might have been, in the procedure to establish contact with the human, to know if I failed or changed any protocol point.

  After some time of observing with visual recreation what had happened with Aumnox, I was able to confirm that there hadn’t been any negligence on my part. However, the images were clear: Aumnox, the earthling, was conscious at the moment of contact. This was not normal. In a phase one contact, the contactees received information through the unconscious mind, in their dreams, in mental projections, visions...their astral travels were carried out unconsciously, without any subsequent memory of anything, and instead they were left with an imprint so that later they would be able to react to the signals we showed them, “coincidences” as they thought, in order to make certain advances until achieving a conscious connection with us.

  For some reason I couldn’t understand, the human girl reacted in an unusual way this time: she was conscious during her astral travels. If it is true that in phase one contacts, the human stays calm because they remember us from previous meetings, this time Aumnox had responded in an uncontrolled manner. She seemed to have forgotten our previous phase one contacts. She was disoriented and believed that she knew me in a very different way. I could tell how her body started to generate a very strong energy, I think what humans call desire. I saw her energy field brighten and spread through the reaction that my presence provoked in her. I read her intention to get closer to me.

  But I couldn’t yet let her get closer to my energetic field. If I had allowed it, it probably would have left her with severe internal injuries to her nervous or circulatory system, an unnecessary risk that would just put her life in danger. She wasn’t ready yet.

  The contact program required complete meticulousness. We induced suggestive images so that their subconscious minds would get used to our presence, and their limbic systems would not feel us as a threat, and after the pre-adaption, be able to start working together. However, despite the previous contacts, she had had a lapse or amnesia in which she didn’t recognize me from our contacts and apparently confused me with another human.

  “Maybe the mental ‘memory’ programming has failed and that has led to the confusion,” I thought in the middle of the room. “No, the projections haven’t failed, it must be something else, though I don’t know what it could be.”

  In between my reflections, I felt Gireln’s energy quickly approaching my position, so I tried to erase those doubts from my mind and prepare myself for the encounter.

  “Eset, what’s happened?” Gireln asked from a distance, bewildered. Although the question gave no information, he knew exactly what she was referring to. “That reaction wasn’t included in the program,” she argued telepathically.

  My associate crossed the Readjustment Room threshold but stayed a few yards away. She had been part of the crew well before me, and surpassed me in seniority, but we had the same rank.

  “I know,” I said very calmly. “Don’t worry, I’ve seen the mission previsions and everything is going according to plan. Nothing has changed. The program remains intact and the prospects continue to be positive.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen that, too,” affirmed Gireln.

  “We’re just about to establish conscious contact with them. Do you think there might be problems with the contactees?” Gireln knew I was talking about Aumnox.

  “Next time we should take special precautions with Aumnox. If we see that the mission is in danger, we may be forced to remove her from the program.”

  We were in agreement about that. Anything that went beyond the stipu
lated plan could jeopardize the entire mission and, at this point, we couldn’t risk it.

  “Correct. We’ll watch her evolution more carefully,” I answered via mental telepathy. However, I knew that my response hadn’t convinced her completely. Our ability to perceive the emotions, feelings, and thoughts of others made it almost impossible to have secrets and Gireln was able to tell that something was not right. For some strange reason, that was disconcerting, and I couldn’t hide it altogether.

  My colleague turned around and left with the same elegance with which she’d arrived.

  I asked myself if there were anyone else in the crew who’d had a similar experience. It would be interesting to know. However, my commitment to fulfill my mission was paramount. I had to focus on the mission and for that, the best thing to do would be to forget about that small setback. I shouldn’t give it more importance than it warranted. If she reacted again and suffered delusions, she’d have to be removed from the program.

  But for now, I could stay calm. It seemed like everything was in order. On my end, I did everything I could to help her. I had projected new memories to her unconscious and subconscious mind so that, when the moment came, she would only know me from the encounters arising from the contact program. That should be enough to fix that mishap. Thus, when the human awakes in the earthly dawn, she would remember everything as if it had been a dream, just a little different, and in turn, that dream implant would unconsciously help her to take the next step, the last before conscious contact in phase two, for which we had been preparing her.

  However, we’d have to wait until the date of the next approximation to see if indeed that had worked.

  The coordinates were fixed within the crew, the instructions were precise. The references and guidelines for the subsequent meeting could also be successfully transmitted to the terrestrials who were already collaborating with the mission in active mode. It was just a matter of waiting a few days.