Sample Chapter of My E.T. Diary by Channie

Diary part 41

Centara

Channie had gone to the meeting place Yexes had suggested. She was now waiting for the vessel that was coming to pick her up. She was a few minutes early. While she was waiting she studied the sunny picturesque surroundings in front of her. It was the last day of May and the beginning of summer. The sun was warm and it bathed her from a cloudless sky. The heat made the air quiver. She was thinking that landings in the middle of the day weren’t very common. But this was going to be one of those. She thought it would be nice to see a spaceship with a sunny Swedish pre-summer landscape in the background. This landscape was especially familiar to her since their summerhouse was very near this uncultivated meadow. She used to spend many weekends and most of the summer around here. Channie looked up at the sky again and strained to look towards the horizon. ‘Where are they? It must be time now,’ she thought impatiently. Thinking that, she saw a vessel approach her in the sky. The silvery disc cut through sheer veils of clouds in the east as it descended a little. It made a wide arc and came in at a lower altitude from the west. It got ready to land on the soft, slightly uneven tufts of grass on the meadow. At the almost soundless landing, some dry soil was stirred. Channie let the dust settle before she approached the ship. The vessel had landed and she was expected. The steel ramp was lowered and the sliding doors opened without a sound as the came closer to the ship.

A man was standing in the door opening, smiling and waving. Channie knew him well since she had met him several times before. He motioned for her to hurry. His name was Do Jortann. He was fairly tall and slim. He had fair, curly, and slightly tousled hair. His eyes were golden and they were always glittering with amusement. The ever-smiling mouth, with its white even teeth, matched his already perfect face. On Earth, he would have been described as incredibly good looking as well as being very manly. With his beautiful exterior and elegant posture, he would probably make most people look at him with awe. Very few men on Earth would be as beautiful, charming and elegant as he was, and if you added his charisma and intelligence to that, men from Earth would fall far behind in comparison.

Channie gave him a big smile and took his outstretched hand. Even though they shook hands in this human manner, they still greeted each other the extraterrestrial way; both of them said “Afgall.” He added “Hatesch” to show her that she was very welcome. Channie had seen a lot of him lately; that is before her ‘time alone.’ She thought about this as the doors closed behind them. She had met Do Jortann when her ordinary teacher, Yexes, had been otherwise engaged. Yexes hadn’t had the time to take care of her lessons, so Do Jortann had filled in as an extra. He did this even though he was of a higher rank and he didn’t usually teach. He was usually in charge of helping extraterrestrials that had lived and worked on Earth, to get back. Those extraterrestrials had either been human for a short time, or they had incarnated and lived a long life, from birth to death, as a human being.

What Channie didn’t know at this time, was that there were more ways than one, that beings from other planets could be placed on Earth. One way was that when a newborn on Earth had died for some reason, an exchange was made and the dead baby would be exchanged for an extraterrestrial baby that was identical to the dead one. This procedure was most unusual though. Another way to place an extraterrestrial on Earth, was to temporarily let them assume the body and shape of a human being, then the ship would land, let the beings disembark and let them live in society for a while. Those people would have unusual gifts and powers and an obvious protection from the outside at all times. They got resources in form of education and money to be able to blend in with everyone else, and to not be seen. Sometimes a copy of an already contacted person would be created. This copy could, as a matter of fact, act as the actual person on their home base if need should arise. Thus, the copy could act as an alibi or to confuse eventual persecutors.

There were also those extraterrestrials that had died in the Universe and now saw it as their job to incarnate on Earth as a support for its evolvement. They wouldn’t assume a new body in the Universe, but would ask for permission to enter the body of a fetus to become a human being. But there were also those who incarnated on Earth even though they hadn’t died in the Universe, but had their extraterrestrial body elsewhere. These people could alternate between their two bodies. When one body would be asleep, it entered the other one. Naturally, the soul could only be in one body at a time. Another way to be present on Earth was to be there without a physical body, but still be able to help.

What Channie already knew was that those who had once lived on Earth needed support and peace on their return to Universe in order to get used to the life and work they had had within the Alliance, prior to their time on Earth. Channie knew that it was within this field Do Jortann usually worked.

Channie had boarded the vessel and she and Do Jortann left the doors behind them. He closed the doors by using the command “gechand” (close). The doors always closed without a sound. One set of doors closed vertically and then another set closed horizontally. The soft lighting in the corridor was easier on her eyes than the sharp sunlight outside the vessel. They were standing in a corridor that went around the entire ship. Its inner wall faced the maneuver room and the outer one had several exit doors, like the one through which she had just entered the vessel. They went to the maneuver room and on their way there, they passed another set of double doors. She had glimpsed these doors behind Do Jortann as she had entered the vessel. Channie knew that the vessels were usually built with double doors for security. They were after all there to protect the most vulnerable part of the vessel; the crew.

When they entered the maneuver room at last, they descended the two steps that took them to the floor below. ‘Those two steps seemed to be mandatory when building maneuver rooms,’ Channie thought. Even though this vessel was new to her, she recognized the model. She and Do Jortann went to one of the rows of passenger armchairs that were placed here and there along the rounded wall. They sat down next to each other. Channie buckled up and leaned back in the soft chair. She looked around the familiar room with a smile on her lips. Everyone was busy making the large vessel ready for take off. She nodded now and then to a familiar face that happened to be turned towards her, instead of the maneuver panels.

The equipment in this room was very advanced and hi-tech. There were a multitude of equipment on almost all the tables and walls. Everywhere around her she could see screens, displays and blinking, as well as steadily shining, lights. This was a feast for the curious eyes of a human being. About twenty extraterrestrials were working. Most of them were busy trying to make the vessel take off fast. It takes about sixteen minutes before the actions of the Swedish Air Force become irritating. Sometimes it didn’t take more than eight and a half minutes before they acted, but usually the Swedish Air Force was a little lax in taking action. They were also fairly harmless compared to e.g. France and the U.S.A. Still, they wanted to leave fast, since eight minutes had been used flying in and for landing. They took off towards the clear blue sky and then into the endless space. Channie enjoyed this just as much every time. She looked at the big screens that were positioned along the curved side of the room. They showed a perfect picture of what could be seen outside. On one of the screens she could see the pale surface of the moon. The vessel passed the moon at a fairly slow speed,. Suddenly almost all the screens went black and were substituted by the ‘radar’ and some other technological equipment. Channie guessed that they would be traveling with White Time, which meant that she wouldn’t be able to see anything.

There were so many things around Channie that she couldn’t understand. She looked at the colored panels that were placed here and there on the outer wall of the maneuver room. The colors were changing according to the different storage of, for instance, water. Everything was easy to supervise from afar. That was good, especially if there was only one person steering this vessel. She noted that the color that showed the water reserve on this vessel was light blue. Usually it would be dark bright blue. She had heard that in the olden days, they used to fill the vessels up with water on Earth, but these days the seas and the lakes were too badly polluted almost everywhere. This made it possible for the extraterrestrials to use the water in only some parts of the arctic sea at the north- and south poles, and that water was only used for emergencies because even that water wasn’t entirely pure. In short, you could say that it was no use to purify the bad water on Earth; they would rather wait until they came to another planet to get fresh water.

Channie and Do Jortann unbuckled their belts because they weren’t needed any more. They were only needed going in and out of the Earth’s atmosphere, and they had passed through the atmosphere a long time ago. All the garbage that humans had placed around the Earth couldn’t harm these vessels, but it could get a bit rocky if you should happen to hit anything. She had experienced this on previous trips. There were also atmospheric winds and other energies that might create turbulence at the time of entry.

Channie studied the room more carefully, always interested in the work of the others. They were standing or sitting by panels with touch controls or colorful lighted screens. Some strange small lights had buttons next to them, which seemed to be engineered just by light taps of the fingertips. These very peculiar machines seemed to catch Channie’s attention, much more so than the strange-looking operators did. Some of the operators had more distinguished features than Do Jortann’s yellow eyes. None of the beings seemed scary to her though, despite their strange looks. Some of them were cat people, like Mjouri, with big ears on top of their heads. They had more or less cat-like features. Some of them had distinctly cat-like features and bodies that even had a tail. Others looked a lot like Mjouri; they only had the ears and the vertical slits for pupils that cats have, while the rest of them looked like human beings. Channie really liked both Mjouri and cats on Earth, so this made her extra partial to this kind of beings, even if the extraterrestrial kind was walking upright and measured up to seven feet in height. Of all the beings in the room right now, none of the appearances were new to her. They all had familiar features even though she didn’t personally know them.

The maneuver operators were all getting up, and one after another left the room. They had obviously programmed the speed and route for the next destination, which was still unknown to Channie. She looked around again. She had always wondered how the extraterrestrials could steer their vessels. Just to keep track of all the equipment with its gauges, touch controls and so on. There were also many other things to keep track of, like different routes, for instance White Time tunnels. It all seemed so incredible, even when twenty beings were working on it, like they did here. Of those twenty, only about half of them seemed to be occupied, and they didn’t seem to be stressed at all. There usually weren’t that many who were busy with the instruments. She guessed that the extraterrestrials that had been picked up before they landed on Earth just thought it was fun to give their colleagues a helping hand on board. From her previous experiences, she knew that it was not unheard of to maneuver this kind of vessel on your own. Just the thought of that made her head spin. Extraterrestrials with their brain capacity and enormous intelligence were probably the only ones who could do something like that but even then, it seemed astounding to say the least.

Channie went over to the two sitting in the mid-section of the vessel. She greeted them happily:

“Afgall.”

They greeted her warmly with a smile. Their gray, slanted eyes looked at her momentarily before they turned back to the blinking lights of the maneuver table. The lit screens scanned the sky, both in front of and behind, she vessel. They had passed almost all the planets in her solar system. She saw Pluto emerge on one of the screens, and behind it, she saw the small, greenish-gray parallel planet Ademenes with its small, ice covered moon Orindo. That was the last thing she saw before the screen went black. They had now left everything known to her behind them. She was on another journey, an adventure, on her way to an unknown destination. The two now told her that it was time to increase the speed and to travel in White Time, so that she and the others would get to their destination within a reasonable time frame.

“The others are going upstairs to get something to drink. Do you want to join us?”

“Yes, sure,” Channie said.

Do Jortann was standing by her side again and it was he who had asked her to join them. A warm smile played on his beautifully shaped lips. From now on the radar would do the watching for them. It did this in cooperation with the mainframe on board. This way the staff could get a break. Channie knew that a kind of ‘radar’ was checking out for other vessels.

The radar on board will give them all the information about the other ship’s flight path, speed, size and origin. It does this even within White Time, where everybody dematerializes. The other ships could be seen on the radar as yellowish-white, blinking dots. A red, blinking triangle would mark unidentifiable vessels or probable enemies, and a warning signal would go off. The triangle takes up more space on the radar than the actual vessel so that ample time would be given to prepare for an eventual attack or for an escape. All possible escape routes will show up on the ‘map-screens.’ Fortunately, there were hardly ever any attacks from the sole enemies of the Alliance. The best thing was just to stay away from their immediate boundaries and territorial borders. Channie shuddered as she thought about her visit to the galaxy-territory of the evil, the ‘Three-galaxy group.’ The radar on board also displays the contours of suns, planets and moons. In this kind of vessel there is also a ‘cube’, in the maneuver room. This cube can range between two feet times two, to six feet times six, all depending on what was needed. The transparent cube shows a cut of a bigger part of the Universe than just the immediate area around the ship. The cube in this ship was about five feet times five. Channie couldn’t make heads or tails about how it worked, but that could be because she didn’t know all that much about how the Universe was constructed. The cube was used at high speed and when traveling in White Time (since they were dematerialized then), but they could travel at great speed even outside White Time. Sometimes they would have to go through matter, since the high speed made it impossible to yield. She found it difficult to understand about dematerialization and to go through matter. How could it be possible? She didn’t even dare to start thinking about that. She knew that it involved several ‘micro effects’, a double-turn effect, and naturally other powerful energies. It has something to do with revoking the glue of life and by doing that, breaking apart the structure of the atoms, and so on. She didn’t understand all of that yet though. Maybe there were also other things that played an important part in the whole process; things that she didn’t have a clue about, or at least wasn’t fully aware of yet. For now, she was content knowing as much as she did.

The vessel’s mainframe communicates with other computers of the ‘same race’ as well as with the computers on board all vessels that belong to the Alliance, simultaneously. They collect new data all the time. It’s almost like it’s a thinking individual, an intelligence without biological form or shape, but with a soul. It can change the vessel’s course on it’s own accord to avoid a collision or something to that effect. It will do this automatically if another vessel is approaching on a collision course or it can quickly dematerialize the vessel if the scanner finds something in front of it that might harm it. Since the vessel as a ‘thinking individual’ wants to save its ‘own hide,’ collisions almost never happen. Channie had never heard of any accidents with spaceships. Besides, the pilots and other crewmembers have to go through a long and arduous education.

Do Jortann took her arm. He probably thought she lingered for too long in there. They left the maneuver room. First they passed one of the transparent boards that were serving as ‘map screens.’ There were a few of them placed here and there on the floor. As usual, the map screen caught Channie’s eye. She hung back again. These maps showed all the routes, clearly marked in different colors. Extraterrestrial codes and numbers marked the different routes, all written on either the bottom of the map or beside the marked route itself. The different colors described both how bad the traffic is, and what kind of route it is. There are different ‘roads’ in space; there are the white flexible time tunnels as well as the flexible system of coils, and the stationary ‘ordinary’, popular routes. Yexes had taught Channie about this. If the route marking was brown for instance, meant that it was an ordinary ‘road’ between two inhabited planets, united by the Alliance. The reason for having these ‘roads’ in the first place, was to ensure the security of smaller vessels. These roads, or routes, as they were called, were continuously cleared of all garbage. The screens showed a large area around the ship and it automatically followed the preset course. They could also give information about alternate routes relating to the one you or the mainframe had chosen. Your own vessel was shown there; a white flashing dot on the chosen route. In this case, the route was green. It joined a wide yellow line a little further ahead. On this kind of screen no other vessels could be seen, it was just used as a map. Most pilots knew their surroundings and their routes very well, so these maps were seldom used. They might come in handy for new pilots, but for all the others it was more of a splash of color in this otherwise drab-looking maneuver room. Yes, the colors in the maneuver room of most vessels were truly dull and drab. Channie didn’t know the reason for that though.

The lush wall-to-wall carpet in this room was anthracite. What she could see of the walls between the panels, were silvery white. The color of the panels was of a darker silver. She didn’t know what kind of metal they were made of. Everything was softly lit by light-panels that were placed in a circle that originated from the middle of the ceiling. It looked a little bit like the grooved underside of a mushroom. The stem of the ‘mushroom’ concealed parts of the power source. Channie loved looking at all the technical things, she couldn’t get enough of it even though she wasn’t especially technically oriented. Do Jortann tugged at her arm once again and she realized that she had to go with him. Sighing, she followed him obediently. They went to the elevator that quickly took them upstairs where they entered a room that looked like a living room, and Channie thought quietly that ‘ there were certainly no drab or dull colors up here.’ In fact, the dull and drab colors of the maneuver room were nowhere to be seen in the rest of the vessel. The colors were happy and vibrant here. This kind of colorful decoration was probably unique for extraterrestrials. Few people on Earth would even come up with the idea to decorate their rooms in these colors.

They had only gone up one flight, but it was still the top floor, because this vessel wasn’t as tall as other models. Subsequently the room they had entered was directly under the ceiling, and above the maneuver room. This room was used as any ordinary living room or recreation room. This was where everybody met, drinking tea, talked or just rested for a while. The room was shaped as an octagonal, and about one hundred square yards in diameter. Seven small bedrooms protruded from the corners, one in each corner. There were two cots in each room and each room was decorated according to the taste of its inhabitants. The colors and the interior varied a lot in the rooms. You could almost figure out where the inhabitants came from just by their choices of color. The eighth room was a kitchen with dining room. The big table could seat fourteen people. It was obvious that there were usually no more than fourteen people on board, or at least they didn’t stay overnight. It was probably possible to make room for more people in the living room area but at this time, neither Channie nor any of the others, needed a place to sleep. Everyone would make it to their respective destinations without having to stay overnight. Anyway, it was not common to have to sleep on a vessel. If you did, it would be because the journey was incredibly long, or (which was the most probable) because you just wanted to sleep there, or that you were just cruising around.

A young woman was standing in the kitchen and Channie knew that her name was Anja. Anja was a little shorter than Channie; she was only about five feet tall. She was slim and she had curly blond hair and green eyes. Her features were clean-cut and humanoid; she could almost be mistaken for a human being. A man was standing beside Anja. He was taller, had a dark complexion and layered black hair. His posture and his entire being looked Indian. Channie had studied his eyes extra carefully in the maneuver room, because they were extraordinary; the irises were bright blue, but they had brown streaks in them. His parents must have been of two different ‘races.’ He stood up and placed some toasted ‘wheat cookies’ on a plate. Naturally, these cookies didn’t contain wheat, and hardly any sugar either, but they almost tasted the same she thought. Anja, who had just added the tea leaves to the pot, put kireberries in a large bowl. Kireberries were Channie’s favorite. These delicious berries were reddish-pink, or maybe the color could be called crimson. Their shape could best be described as two hearts put together so that seen from above they would create a cross. The rounded heart shape was the top part where the stem was fastened. The berries grow on plants resembling strawberries or on small bushes. There was also a kind of kireberries that had the shape of three hearts. They always grew on bushes and usually became between one and two inches long. That were the kind of berries that were now in the bowl in front of her. Channie wet her lips with the tip of her tongue in anticipation; they tasted indescribably good and very sweet, almost like wild strawberries. There is a dark brown edible pit in the middle, the size of a roasted coffee bean, and it tastes almost like chocolate.

Anja entered the big room carrying the tray with tea, cookies and berries. The others were already sitting or lying on the soft couches that were placed all over the room. The lighting was dim and Do Jortann had lighted some wax-like candles that now spread their light and scent everywhere. Somebody had turned on some music that came out of concealed speakers. Soft tones spread through the room and filled everyone with peace. ‘Extraterrestrials love music’, Channie thought. There was a lot of music to choose from in the ‘music shelf’ from the infinite Universe. Even music from Earth could sometime be appealing to extraterrestrials. The only thing they didn’t like was jazz and hard rock.

Channie looked up towards the closed ceiling. The screens in the ceiling were unfortunately, closed since they wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway, going at this speed. Otherwise it was a fantastic experience to lie on your back on a soft couch, with a cup of hot tea in your hand, look at space outside and study stars, planets and moons, both known and unknown, that passed by. They were silent and beautiful as they majestically glided by. It was an experience you never forgot and a view that you would never get tired of. But now Channie had to be content just looking around the room instead. Up here, the room was awash with colors that were now dimly illuminated by the lights. There were a multitude of colorful cushions in the big soft couches. Bright yellow, red, brown and purple cushions were dominating though. These were the typical colors of the people from Oktra. Many big-leaved plants were growing up the walls on trellises. These didn’t come from Oktra though. The plants were greenish-blue and seemed to thrive on board. They had surely been asked if they wanted to live there.

After an hour and a half, Earth time, it was obviously time to go down to the maneuver room again. Channie had befriended three people by then, and they were all from the planet Oktra. They very nice and sweet and they all resembled each other, with almost identical clothes and hairstyles. Their hair was dark brownish-gray and their bangs had a straight cut. All of them had the same eye color; the irises were gray and clear. There was one woman and two men. One of the men was older and had a beard. She had said hello to the woman and the younger man before, downstairs, when they were sitting in the midsection of the ship. The woman’s name was Jansa and the younger man’s name was Johfa. They had wanted Channie to tell them about Earth, but suddenly they had asked her a strange question:

“How long have you been there?”

Channie assumed that they wanted to know how old she was, so she answered:

“I’m sixteen years old.”

They all raised their eyebrows quizzically and they were just about to ask her something else when Do Jortann came up to them. He said something to them telepathically. Channie could see that both in his eyes and on his way of looking at them. She couldn’t hear what he said to them, since she still hadn’t learned about telepathy, and besides he used a ‘channel’ that was closed to her. After this quiet conversation between them, they continued to talk to Channie, but now they were asking her about other things. Do Jortann left again and Channie looked at him as he left. She looked a little flustered, but she didn’t say anything.

Up until now, her new friends had been talking, but now the three of them had to go downstairs. Channie stayed behind since Do Jortann was still in the room. She thought about her three new friends. They had been laughing and had a good time. She couldn’t quite forget about the strange question and Do Jortann’s reaction though. Sometimes she did get some very odd and strange questions. This happened mostly when she met new beings that she had never met before, or didn’t know too well. It also happened when she had made friends and acquaintances of her own, which she often did when her teacher turned his back to her so to speak, because it was after all, more fun to choose your own friends. The reaction was always the same; as soon as this new friend asked her a strange question, someone rushed up to them, usually Yexes. He would tell the questioner something telepathically that she couldn’t understand, and the questions would stop immediately. ‘What were they concealing from her? What is it that she isn’t allowed to know?’ These questions, and others, were often on Channie’s mind, but if she ever questioned this, her teacher would just tell her that ‘we’ll get to that later.’ Those had been his final words on the subject and his decision was not to be challenged. True, Yexes wasn’t here at the moment, but Do Jortann had that same determined look on his face, so asking him was out of the question.

One after another, the crew stood up and took their empty cups to the kitchen, and then they proceeded to the elevators and staircases. The captain’s name was Jedjann; his skin tone was a pale bluish-gray and his eyes were dark brown. A headset was fastened over his grayish-white hair. He was touching the cordless headset through which he communicated with the mainframe on board. The mainframe was ‘on line’ with him all the time and gave him continuous information about the status of the vessel. Channie knew that he could also maneuver the vessel via the headset, through ‘thought waves.’

Now the captain too stood up and returned to the maneuver room. Finally, Channie and Do Jortann were the only ones left in the room. Channie felt that Do Jortann had something to tell her, maybe about their destination and what she was going to learn this time.

“Where?”

Channie asked him that question before he even had a chance to open his mouth and he smiled at her enthusiasm. He could possibly also be smiling about the fact that even if he told her the name of the place they were going to visit, she would probably not have a clue about where it was anyway. You seldom visited the same place twice with your teacher, since you were meant to see and learn as much as possible about many different places.

“We are going to galactic ring 18/925/88. The Delta Vega 2 galaxy’s 7th zone in the 6th district. The second planet, Ozam Ligo, in the solar system Merbhur’emes.”

“Oh, that place! How nice,” Channie replied with a giggle since none of it made any sense to her at all. Do Jortann would often refer to the different places they were going to with precision, even though he knew full well that she wouldn’t understand a thing. It was like he really wanted to be up front about their destination, and not like Yexes who would talk about the people they were going to meet there, and their culture and so on. The ‘military’ in Do Jortann surfaced now as always, and she now ‘knew’ where they were going.

“Is it far away?”

“No, we’re almost there.” He looked at the color that told the time on his watch.

“Good,” Channie said. “Are we staying here or are we going down?”

“We’re going down,” he said.

They went down in the elevator and he brought Channie to one of the rows of armchairs.

“Are we landing already,” she wondered and looked at him quizzically.

“No,” he said.

“But why are we sitting down already?” She looked at him again, her eyes full of even more questions.

“Buckle up,” he said.

Channie did as she was told and when they had both fastened their seatbelts, he said:

“There’s a meteor shower ahead of us.”

“Aha!”

“Besides, we’re so close now that we might as well stay here until we’ve landed.

They started their descent about fifteen minutes later. He seemed a little curt with her, but she had seen on his facial expression that he had been receiving a telepathic message as he was talking to her. From the look on his face, it seemed like the message wasn’t positive. He was quiet for a while, looking preoccupied and she wondered:

“Bad news from home?”

“No. As a matter of fact it was about you.”

“Me!” Channie cried. “What have I done now?”

“Calm down, you haven’t done anything wrong,” Do Jortann said softly.

“Then what’s going on?” she asked.

“They are rushing things……”

They didn’t have time for more, because the others had just completed the landing and they were anxious to move on, so Channie and Do Jortann stood up and hurried towards the exit door. Outside, a fantastic view met them; the landing site was adjacent to a city. Everything in the city was sparkling, almost like it was all made of shining silver. The only color Channie saw, apart from silver, was white. All the people wore wide white tunics. As Channie and Do Jortann walked down the ramp, they were met halfway by a happily chattering creature that pulled them towards a building. The creature wasn’t silent for a moment and Channie glanced at Do Jortann. He smiled but didn’t interrupt the creature. Suddenly it threw one of its warm arms around her shoulders and she saw that the other arm was amicably wrapped around Do Jortann’s shoulders. The billowing wide tunic the creature was wearing had opened a little. The arms were almost bared and she saw that the skin was of a deep purple color. Channie found the color beautiful and original. The features were of a kind that showed all the sinews under the skin. The hair was white, thin and cut in layers in a way that it seemed to end in nothing. What amazed her the most though were the eyes. She had never seen anything so intensely green, not even on an object or on any fabric.

They had entered the building and the creature still hadn’t stopped chattering. It didn’t even seem to have time to breathe. Channie wondered what it was saying. All of a sudden the flow of words stopped as if someone had cut off a sound tape, or as if something inside the creature had broken, and she flinched. To her surprise, Do Jortann began to talk in exactly the same way; a stream of extraterrestrial words, spoken so fast that it was impossible to hear single words. Everything became one long sentence. He too suddenly stopped talking and Channie found herself standing with her mouth wide open. The creature turned to her now and said to her in perfectly flawless Swedish:

“Hello!”

It sounded as cut off as the other things he had said earlier, but it didn’t sound in any way unfriendly. Once again Channie had to get a grip on herself and close her mouth. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and said:

“Hello, nice to meet you.”

Afterwards she thought that this was a real lame thing to say, but the creature didn’t seem to take any notice and started babbling in Swedish. Even though this was her own language, she had problems understanding him. She smiled to herself and thought about getting back to Earth and her mother asking her: “So what have you been up to this weekend?” and Channie answering her in a seemingly endless stream of words. ‘You really had to be careful so that you don’t imitate everything you hear and see,’ Channie thought with a smile. She realized that the creature had abruptly stopped speaking again and that she hadn’t been listening or, for that matter, understood, a lot of what it had said. She desperately tried to figure out if she had been asked a question. She smiled and nodded to herself. The creature could obviously not interpret her reply, or she might have conveyed something entirely wrong, because it looked very surprised. She later realized that the creature didn’t have any kind of body language, and subsequently could not understand her random nodding. She studied the creature again and found that it was completely impossible to tell whether it was male or female. Its name was obviously Ohm anyway.

Ohm showed them many greenish-blue plants and crystals of almost identical color. They obviously had something to do with one another. Even though the entire monologue was now in Swedish, she could only manage to understand parts of the endless stream of words. It seemed to be talking about some kind of experiment. If Do Jortann had been able to make himself heard, she might have understood more. Their amicable guide stopped talking as abruptly as usual and Channie managed to ask:

“Where did you learn to speak Swedish so well?”

“InSwedenofcourse,” Ohm replied.

“Oh, so you’ve been to Sweden.”

Channie looked at the purple creature in surprise and thought that ‘well, well, even in Sweden we have dark nights that can conceal most things.’

“ButIhavelivedtheremydear,” the creature uttered.

‘Well,” Channie thought. ‘That would be most unlikely. Looking like that, it would have been impossible. Maybe he meant in another life, in an earlier incarnation.’ Instead of asking any more questions, she smiled and this time, she refrained from nodding. Ohm then turned to Do Jortann and a new stream of words flowed from his lips. Then silence, and then followed Do Jortann’s reply.

Their guide once again took them to the street, and they walked into the beautiful city that shimmered like silver. The sky above their heads was golden and two red moons, next to one another, dominated the view. Ohm said goodbye and they were left alone. They walked around the town slowly. Now and then Do Jortann greeted someone that was familiar to him, but apart from that, they walked in silence through the extraordinarily beautiful city. Both of them probably needed to give their ears a rest after having listened to Ohm. All the inhabitants seemed to look very much alike and she wondered how they could tell each other apart. There was nothing about them to distinguish one from the other: nothing in their faces, their hair or their clothes. If Do Jortann had told her, she would have known that they could easily tell each other apart. They can read auras, and since no two auras are alike, they had no problems to see who was who. They all looked identical to Channie, who didn’t use her ability to read auras right now.

They had exited through something that looked like a city portal and they stepped right into the lush landscape that surrounded the city. Everything was extraordinarily beautiful here and Channie dried a tear of happiness from the corner of her eye. They sauntered along and found a narrow path. They followed it and left the city even further behind them.

“It was good that this is where we were supposed to go…. but maybe it was planned from the beginning….” Do Jortann said. He was talking to himself and didn’t expect an answer from her. They stopped now and then to look at something interesting or beautiful. Suddenly, in the middle of the blossoming landscape, they came to a golden gate. There was no fence there, but hedges created an impenetrable wall on each side of the gate.

“Can we go in there?” Channie wondered if it was allowed.

“Yes, of course we can!”

He laughed and opened the big gate. As soon as they had entered, tiny little elves buzzed around them. They probably wanted to see who came to visit their garden. Yes, it was a garden and Channie thought that it must be the most beautiful place in the Universe. Everything was organized and planned, down to the smallest detail. Every little greenish-blue straw of grass had been planted with precision. All straws were of the exact same height and it almost seemed like they had been combed so that they would stand straight and look nice together. It was all a wonder of beauty and it gave peace to their senses. Channie and Do Jortann followed the crooked path while the elves sang above their heads.

Channie saw a well further up on the path. She ran ahead towards it, playful and happy. Do Jortann followed her, laughing and frolicking. He looked like a calf that had been let out in a field for the first time, dancing happily around her and the well. The responsible and slightly stiff military was completely gone. She looked down the well. Deep down the water glittered, cold, clear and tantalizing. She took the bucket that was placed on the edge of the well and let it down slowly with the long rope that was attached to the handle. She heard it hit the water far down below. When the bucket was full, she hoisted it up. Icy cold, clear and tasty, it quenched her thirst completely. Do Jortann satiated his thirst too. The remaining water was left for the elves who finished it, buzzing happily.

They continued walking around the big park. Small, lively, playful and humming elves followed them everywhere. Nature played them a symphony of color and the elves were doing the singing. After another couple of lush clumps of strongly scented trees, the landscape opened up again. Huge, wide lawns went down towards a lake. In the middle of the lake, she could see a luxuriant island. A small white temple could be seen between big trees and other vegetation. White cliffs seemed to dominate most of the island. Those cliffs were covered by foliage that grew almost all the way down to the waterline. The island seemed to be covered by vegetation.

Channie and Do Jortann continued their walk around the lake. On the other side of the island they saw a white beach. Do Jortann stopped and they stood there for a while and admired the view. She turned towards him and she was going to tell him something but she stopped even before the words had formed on her lips. Do Jortann’s face had a very strange expression. He looked at her for a long while, almost a little sadly and then he said:

“You’re growing up now. Yes, you are almost an adult and it is time. I’m the one who has been chosen to help you,” he continued. “Today, here and now.”

After saying this he looked tired. Channie didn’t understand. She sensed that something important was happening, but what?

“I just hope I can do this….” he mumbled.

These were words that Channie never thought she would hear him say. He was standing there underrating himself! She couldn’t bear to look at him like this so she turned away. Do Jortann said seriously:

“Channie Centara.”

I turned around with a funny feeling in my stomach. “Channie Centara,” I said and tasted the name. It felt familiar. My name was Channie already. My extraterrestrial friends had given me that name when I was nine years old, since it was easier for them to pronounce that name, than Christina. But I didn’t understand the ‘Centara’ part, and why did that name make me feel so strange inside?

Channie searched her memory but she couldn’t find an explanation in her fairly meager storage of extraterrestrial words. At least she couldn’t find a good translation.

“Why Channie Centara?”

She looked at Do Jortann with a slight frown.

“Gejan ascha ese (explain to me),” she said with confusion.

He gave her a big smile and his yellow eyes were glittering with amusement.

“Does it sound familiar?” he said.

“Yes it does, but I still don’t understand at all,” Channie said and shook her head. She continued:

“No, I don’t understand…”

“No, I know you don’t. I’ll explain it to you. First of all I can tell you that it is your name.”

“My name,” Channie exclaimed in surprise. “I don’t get it, what do you mean ‘my name’?”

“Centara is your family name; this is your name as well as your family’s,” he said serenely.

“Channie is your first name.”

“But you gave me the name Channie, or…?”

She said this slowly and hesitantly. She didn’t want to misunderstand him. Do Jortann said:

“No, your name was Channie from the beginning. We just gave it back to you when we named you that. We chose that one of your different names because its interpretation fits you so well.”

Now that he had finished talking, he just smiled softly at her. He didn’t want to scare her.

“So I w…. was Channie fr…. from the beginning,” she stammered. ‘And Centara. He had said it was her family name.’ She blinked and a thought rushed through her body; ‘that would mean that her family was extraterrestrial… and she would be too!’ The thought was astounding. ‘Here she was, in this wonderful world, and she was supposedly a part of it; a part of this garden with all its beauty. It was so exquisitely beautiful, not even in her wildest imagination could she create something as wonderful or magnificent as this. Was she, in her simplicity, a part of all this and more?’ Channie thought that surely somewhere, there must be some very simple and probably a little boring ‘middle-man beings’. But would she fit in even among them? That was the question. Right now she was standing here, in front of a man who wanted her to believe that she was an extraterrestrial, despite her being a simple human being. Could she really be a part of this world with all its beauty?’ Her legs folded and she sank down on her knees on the soft ground, almost as if she was bowing in homage of her heritage. The tiny elves were still dancing and singing around her. All the little beings belonging to this garden flew over their heads in front of a background of a golden sky and fiery red moons.

‘She was Channie Centara, not just Christina from tiny little Sweden, but she was part of something much bigger than that.’ Do Jortann quietly sat down beside her and opened his arms. He embraced her softly.

“I don’t remember anything from this previous life, if I ever had one,” she said.

He gently stroked her hair and said:

“Don’t worry, I’ll restore those memories for you. The time has come to let you know some things. You are a part of us and we can’t wait any longer for you.”

“Wait for me? What do you mean by that?” Her words were muffled from the depth of his embrace.

“We of the Alliance need your help. You have work waiting for you.“

“What kind of work,” she wondered.

“Things that you had to leave as you were called to do your present work.” Once again he stroked her hair.

“I don’t do any work now,” she said.

“Oh, yes you do! Your present assignment is to be who you are on Earth. Your new assignment will be to make use of being just who you are there. There are so many things we hope that you can help us with, not only on Earth, but here too.”

“But what can I do, I’m so young,” said Channie and looked at her body.

“You’re not all that young on Earth anymore, and you’re even older here. What I mean is, that that….” he pointed at her body, “isn’t really your true shape and form. The body you have now is nothing more than a mixture of your earthly parent’s genetic heritage, as well as your own choice. You actually chose part of your appearance when you accepted the assignment of being a human on Earth.

Do Jortann smiled as she said spontaneously:

“So that’s why I have blond hair and green eyes! Everybody else in my family has dark hair and an entirely different eye color.”

“Yes, that’s exactly right,” he said. “Now you will understand better what I mean. Does all this that I told you scare you?” he wondered worriedly.

“No, but I don’t understand all this yet,” said Channie hesitantly.

“You will understand most of it before we leave here,” he said.

She looked around and absorbed the beauty of the garden. That helped to soothe her wandering and slightly anxious soul. All the questions she had, quieted down a little. ‘There were so many things she wondered about, where should she start, and about what?’

“There are so many things I want to ask you about,” she said.

Suddenly she realized that she didn’t even know what she looked like in this world. ‘What did she look like? Yes, what did she really look like?’ She asked herself these questions quietly. She suddenly shivered despite the comfortable temperature in the air and an image formed in her brain; bright eyes, sticky tentacles and cold skin covered in warts. It could have been taken from a cheap horror movie from Earth. Do Jortann, who could both see and hear her thoughts, laughed softly, stroked her back and kissed her brow.

“Look at me,” he said.

Channie looked into his golden eyes. At first she could see her present appearance mirrored in his eyes, but then this image was replaced by another; the real Channie. She gasped, but not by fear. What she saw wasn’t at all scary, and it wasn’t even a strange face that met her; blond, long, curly hair and a cute little face. She had a straight nose and beneath the nose, she saw a soft pink mouth. The mouth was smiling, an enigmatic smile played on the lips, and Channie couldn’t interpret it yet. The eyes dominated the face and they were as deeply golden as those of Do Jortann. Channie gasped and tore her gaze away from the image in his eyes. She almost felt like she had been hypnotized. She had seen this image many times before. She remembered the first time she had seen it; it had been on her first journey on a spaceship. She was only a child at that time and they had brought her with them to show her outer space. While they were working she had been standing alone at a window and she had seen the exact same image reflected beside her own in the shiny window on the vessel. She had seen a woman smiling enigmatically. She remembered that she had turned around happily to greet the beautiful apparition, only to see that the floor behind her was empty. There was no one there; the reflection of the woman was gone. After that she had seen that same reflection in shiny objects, a glimpse in a window, in mirrors or in the surface of water. The reflection was there for a nanosecond, only to disappear. Yes, she had seen this image, or vision, during her growing-up years, and she had always thought that the woman was some kind of guardian angel for her. She was always happy for a long time after seeing the image.

‘So, this woman whose reflection she had seen, was none other than her own self! This was how she looked!’

“But how do I get that look and that body back,” she asked with curiosity.

“Your true self rests deep within you. Only you and your willpower can bring it back fully,” he added.

He pulled at her gently so that the back rested on the bluish-green grass. She inhaled the fresh scent from the flowers deeply as it filled the warm air. The elves sang and the moons traveled over the golden sky.

“Relax now,” he said.

She giggled and said:

“How could I not be relaxed right now? You ought to know better than to say something like that, hmm,” she added.

“Sure, you’re relaxed now, but not relaxed enough. Relax,” he said again. This time she made an effort to become even more relaxed than her brain really wanted. She wondered what would happen and what it would feel like to have another body than the one given to her on Earth. ‘My real body,’ she thought. Such a strange thought since she already thought that she had a body. She closed her eyes and listened to Do Jortann’s words.

“First do whatever you usually do before you leave your body. I know that you’ve been taught how to do this, but go deeper this time. Tune in on the frequency after the usual one. Then go back, towards the light until you’re standing beside it and feel the intensity of it. After that, turn away from it and come back towards me until you can hear my voice clearly again.

She bravely followed his instructions. She wriggled a little on her astral body. It was always a bit of a drag to leave your body; it almost felt like chewing gum. She couldn’t sense any significant change, not until she had left her body completely. When that was done, she suddenly realized that it felt easier and lighter than it usually did. She was kept busy trying to stay as close to the ground as possible. She had to do that so she wouldn’t be carried away by the light breeze that came in from the lake. She always felt vulnerable and unprotected when she left her physical body. She could now see her human body lying heavily on the ground below her.

Do Jortann stood up. He took a few steps on the path they had walked on a few minutes ago and then he stopped. He turned to face her and looked at her. She hovered in the air above him, surrounded by the elves that were still chanting softly. They didn’t seem to have noticed what had just taken place, and they didn’t seem disturbed by the fact that she was hovering in their midst. Do Jortann told her with a pretended sharpness:

“That’s good, stay here. Try not to jump up and down too much. And please, don’t disappear with the wind.”

He then put his hand in the pocket of his coveralls and removed something from it. It was a small pouch and when he opened it something gleamed in the opening. It seemed to her like the pouch was filled with all the colors in the rainbow and then some. He put his hand in his pocket once again. This time he removed something that looked like a leaf. What distinguished this leaf from others was primarily its sharp golden color, but it also gleamed and sparkled as he held it in his hand. It almost seemed to blind him because he squinted slightly with his golden eyes. He held the leaf in his right hand and then he dipped it in the pouch that he held in his left hand. The motion made the contents of the pouch twirl lightly. This caused the elves closest to him to react with happiness and contentment. They caught the multicolored flakes in the air, even before they had fallen halfway to the ground, and then they took off. Channie was watching this in awe and she wondered what would happen next, and what the outcome would be.

“Come on down,” he said with his fake harsh voice and his big warm smile. As she came closer to the ground he offered her the leaf.

“Eat this,” he said.

The protest was already on the tip of her tongue. ‘What did he mean, eat? She couldn’t eat when she was out of her physical body, could she….?’

“But that’s not possible, is it…. “ she started.

“Oh yes! Try it,” he coaxed her.

She went for it and took a bite out of the air where the leaf was. She giggled and was just going to make a snide remark when she, to her utter surprise, perceived a fleeting taste of something very sweet and divinely delicious.

“Try again,” he said.

This time the shape of the mouth solidified and she could accept more of what was offered to her. After the next bite she felt like her inner self exploded. A very sharp blinding light rose within her and made her glow. Millions of tiny colored spheres danced within her and every tissue in her body was created; from the outer layer of her skin, to the innermost of her organs. Her aura started to vibrate and pulsate as she swallowed the last of the leaf and her entire being tingled as she assumed her true form. She looked into Do Jortann’s yellow eyes with hers. She was a little warm but incredibly happy. Yellow eyes met yellow ones for a moment and then he embraced her. Now she was Channie Centara, and happier than she had ever been before.

She looked over to where her physical body was lying. She smiled as she looked at her body on the grass, seemingly peacefully asleep. He let go of her and started walking towards the enticing cool water of the lake. He understood that she needed a little private time. She needed time to get to know, and understand, her ‘new’ body, which was more developed than the one she had just left. This was a body of a woman. She still didn’t have all her memories that would give her kinship, a background to her previous life, and a foundation for her present life. She was divided within, despite her true exterior.

She looked down on her body and found that she was taller than she thought at first. Her body was very slender and it looked very fit. In some strange way this body felt very familiar to her, despite this body being that of a woman. She was fully developed, with round breasts and curves. She wasn’t naked which she had thought at first, she was wearing some kind of coverall. The fabric of the coverall was very sheer and almost completely transparent. On Earth it would have been on the verge of indecency. The coverall had very wide, puffed up, sleeves and legs. She wasn’t sure, but she had the distinct feeling that the coverall wasn’t completely material. A white ribbon was artfully tied under her bust and around her waist. The ribbon, as well as her hair, billowed in the almost non-existent wind. She walked slowly towards the lake’s mirror-like water surface and arrived just in time to see Do Jortann dive from the shore. He broke through the golden surface with an elegant jump and dived into the depth of the lake. He had been entirely naked and she blushed a little self-consciously and looked down on the neat pile of his clothing. She sank down beside them and looked out over the water. He surfaced far out on the calm waters in a cascade of glittering droplets. She had expected him to surface closer to her, and she smiled in amusement when she saw him so much further out than she had expected. He laughed aloud from where he was. He splashed playfully and shouted:

“Come on in!”

She could hardly hear him because something she saw had caught her attention. She sat by the edge of the lake and looked into the water that reflected her image. She saw her own reflection and it captivated and astounded her. She sat there, completely still, and studied her features and tried her smile. She looked into the deeply golden eyes that were reflected in the water. Suddenly something unexpected happened; the color of her eyes changed, became deeper and turned into a brilliant green. She gasped, pulled away from her reflection in fear.

“What’s happening?” Do Jortann’s voice echoed from the lake.

“I don’t know…” she answered quietly with hesitation.

“Something must be wrong,” she mumbled silently.

“What?!” he exclaimed even though he could easily have read every one of her thoughts, but he obviously chose not to. Instead, he dived and surfaced again, closer to her this time. He looked into her eyes, smiled brightly and said gently:

“Don’t be scared, our race change our eye-color now and then. It has to do with the rhythms of night and day and how we feel. All race’s feelings are reflected in the eyes I guess, but we are almost the only race where the color changes too. That’s what makes us unique compared to other races, and your eyes are no exception. They can turn blue too,” he added. “It all depends on what you feel or think.”

“So we are from the same place then?” She was stunned.

“Yes, of course,” he replied.

“I want to take a swim now.” She stood up.

“Well, take your clothes off and get in then.”

“No!”

“Why not?” he wondered.

She blushed and he burst into laughter.

“You’re laughing,” she said accusingly and pouted.

“I’m sorry! It’s difficult for me to imagine you like that… I know you so well, and you always have opinions about everything. It feels strange to think about you, unaware of your other life, when you have your ‘true’ body. Looking at you, one would think that you are your true self now.”

With that he turned his back to her. She loosened the white ribbon and the coverall slipped off her without any unbuttoning or pulling. This confirmed to her that it was not material. She shivered with pleasure as it fell around her feet. Do Jortann turned towards her again as she carefully slid into the water by his side. He leaned towards her and stole a light kiss from her lips before she had a chance to object. His body never touched hers, only his soft lips.

They swam further out in the lake where they splashed and played. For a while they must have looked like small children in a lake in Sweden, on Earth. Her shyness disappeared and when his body touched hers now and then as they were playing, entirely different feelings raced through her body. She didn’t understand them but they were there nevertheless, powerful and exciting. The two of them swam to the island in the middle of the lake. They had already seen the island from all the different angles as they had been walking around the lake. The beauty of the island was embraced by the shallow waves. She had wanted to come to this island ever since she had first laid eyes on it, when they had been walking in the garden. She was curious about it and its lush vegetation. It was a kind of vegetation that was very different from the garden surrounding it. Everything was so organized in the garden; every tree, bush and flower seemed to follow some predetermined rule and pattern, while the plants on the island exploded in a green chaos, without any kind of inhibition or limit. The lake that seemed to tenderly embrace its island had on one side provided it with a beach full of white pebbles. That was the only beach on the island and around the island too, for that matter. The lawns in the garden stretched all the way down to the waterline, which was deep from the very beginning. They could now see the only beach on the island. The white cliffs they had seen sloping into the water surrounded the rest of it. Lush green plants were hanging into the water from the cliffs and they made it impossible to get close enough to be able to climb up on them. So there was no alternative for anyone who wanted to visit the island: the white beach was the only way.

As they waded ashore, she saw that the pebbles on the beach weren’t all white. There were also small golden ones. Pebbles rolled back and forth in the waves that gently lapped the beach. It would have been wrong to say that the waves ‘hit’ the beach because she had never seen any waves move so slowly before. The wave was moving in a strange kind of slow motion. Do Jortann took her hand as they waded the last few yards to the shore together. They walked on the rounded, warm pebbles towards the soft vegetation above the shoreline.

“Come, let’s look for the white temple,” she exclaimed and pulled at him to follow her to the temple they had seen it from the path earlier. They carefully made their way through the dense greenery, careful not to trample something or topple something over. They walked as close to the temple as they could, but the vegetation didn’t allow them to get too close to the building. She had hoped and wished for, a chance to see and touch the temple. Now she saw that only the pigeon-birds were able to get close to it. The white birds were all over the island and by the temple. They were the only ones to reach all the nooks, crannies, towers and turrets without any difficulties, on their wings.

“I guess you must be a bird to be welcome there,” she said with a smile.

“Well, not necessarily a bird,” Do Jortann mumbled quietly before they went on. They found a path that they followed. They walked straight into the dense foliage. Sometimes they had to walk very closely together and sometimes they had to walk on a single file. In those instances, he was leading the way and she followed him closely. They left the path and made their way through the woods and into the thicket. When she looked back, she saw from the look on his face that the vegetation had closed behind them as soon as they passed. The thicket was so dense that it formed an impenetrable wall. It was like it never wanted to let them out again, and as if it didn’t want them to find their way back to the path. She became a little anxious and thought that they would never get out of there again. ‘What if the island was like a labyrinth! Maybe they’d never find a way out and become prisoners. Prisoners on the beautiful island for ever!’ Do Jortann sensed her anxiety. He stopped, turned around, smiled at her, and said very softly:

“I’m here, I’ll find the way.”

He then kissed her forehead, next to her hairline. Those simple words and that act of gentleness reduced her anxiety to an almost nothing. When they had walked a little further, an open space suddenly appeared in front of them. It wasn’t big, maybe twelve feet times twelve or something like that. She stood there mutely and stared in surprise at the glade. The vegetation was completely different from that on the rest of the island. The ground was full of big pinkish-white flowers. There were so many of them that it was impossible to see the ground beneath them, or to pass through them for that matter. The trees spread their branches over the glade but they didn’t dare to root there. Everything was quiet, still, and permeated peace. It almost felt like they were trespassing even though they were only standing at the edge of the glade, looking in. They didn’t belong there; they were disturbing something unique and maybe also sacred. She wanted to leave and restore the peace in there.

“Come on, let’s leave,” she said. But she still wanted to stay and absorb all the beauty in her senses.

“To walk on this ground would be sacrilege,” said Do Jortann. “It lives through the magic of love,” he continued quietly. Then he laughed softly and before she knew what he was going to do, he pulled her into his arms and pulled her down to rest on the bed of flowers. He rolled her over the seemingly very delicate flowers in wild play. He rolled her towards the middle of the glade. She was devastated because she had time to think about the destruction Do Jortann’s wild shenanigans with her must have caused. They must have caused irreparable damage to these frail flowers. The thought of the flowers being crushed under the weight of their bodies was horrifying to her. That’s why she couldn’t believe her eyes when she looked back and saw that the flowers were standing there, as erect as ever.

‘Had she been dreaming? No, she had felt them against her back.’ She couldn’t understand how this was possible, and they were looking untouched. Even now her body was resting heavily on the soft bed of flowers, and she felt the them pressing into the ground. She moved carefully and sat up and something extraordinary happened: something flashed and where the flowers had been pressed to the ground, a little cloud or stardust rose. It rained down on the flowers and suddenly they were standing as straight as ever again. Some of the dust fell on her face. She took a deep breath and she tasted something bubbling, sizzling, sweet and good, like soda pop, in her mouth. After that she was filled with strange sensations of incredible happiness. A fantastic feeling of warmth spread within her.

“This place is so incredibly beautiful,” Do Jortann said quietly. “It’s also a good place to restore your memories. Lie down on your back. I’ll give you part of your memory back,” he continued.

She lay down and looked up at the sky. She closed her eyes and inhaled the fresh scent of the flowers. He transferred her memories to her telepathically. They stormed through her; they flashed by like a film being run at fast speed. She was only given the soothing, beautiful memories; memories of longtime friends, a dear family and her origin. There were also memories of her own home, and places she had visited. It was more like information that opened her senses. It felt a little like waking up after a deep sleep. Most people must, at some time, have slept really deeply, so deeply that when they wake up, they’re not really sure of where they are or even who they are. That was how she felt, laying there; waking up to her true Self.

She had only been sixteen years old on Earth. In her extraterrestrial life, she was more than three hundred years old right now. And that was after her latest re-birth. Before this re-birth, there was a lot more time. She realized that altogether she was thousands of years old. She is what they call a very old soul here. She had actually been here a lot longer than she had been on Earth so far. This was a bit difficult to accept at first. It was like her life on Earth turned into mere seconds of her true eternity; an eternity filled with knowledge, the width of which slowly opened and was understood by her senses, thought and soul. Everything that had been closed became open. All the knowledge she had accumulated in the Universe for thousands of years was once again hers to take part of. ‘At least for as long as I’m here,’ she thought, because she understood that parts of this must be concealed to her while on Earth so that she could remain the same – a human being. She was a sixteen-year old girl, becoming a woman, ordinary and human. Being human was her assignment, which was no simple feat in these times.

Do Jortann continued and she was now able to see, in her mind, all the places she had lived in. There were places that were so very different from the places she had visited with Tissi Mo and Yexes. There were planets with conditions that were difficult for her to understand even now, with her vast, restored knowledge. The places were so different from anything that she had ever seen, but they were still part of her memories, background and origin. She had always accumulated knowledge and experience within a multitude of widely separated areas; she understood that now. Almost all her knowledge came back to her. She did, however, notice that there were gaps and forbidden areas, even among these ‘new’ memories and her consciousness quickly found them. She wanted to know what was concealed behind them, but she was stopped, and she only found dead ends. She was still not allowed to remember some things that she must have known. She wondered if those memories would come back in time, or if they were memories that she was still not ready to take part of? If that was the case, she understood and accepted it. But there were clearly important lapses in time; places she must have seen, persons she would have met, in order for all her memories to make sense time-wise. There were images that were completely blank and persons who were suddenly her close friends, but she had no recollection of meeting them before. She did find something that made her happy as she searched her memory bank; the extraterrestrial vibration language was completely intact within her. In addition, she remembered many other extraterrestrial languages and she realized that she was fluent in at least another fifty of those. Even some of the languages on Earth would be easier for her to speak and understand after this trip. This last knowledge would probably come in handy.

He opened her blocks and now she searched her inner thoughts on her own accord, even after he had finished giving her information. Her true friendship with Laina and Mjouri was there already and it proved to be a very old friendship. She also knew Tissi Mo and Yexes from before. There were some persons and her relation to them that she was very unsure about though. She did however, find out about some parts of her relationship with Do Jortann. She took a closer look on this memory. Something told her that she had very strong feelings for him since very far back. Do Jortann was special to her, in this, her real life.

“You are special to me, aren’t you?”

He looked at her for a long time before he replied:

“You found out too soon, too soon…. but I want you to know that…. I love you,” he said quietly.

Nothing else needed to be said, she understood so much now. Many ‘whys’ got their special and also logical explanation by those few words. The times they had met, looks he had given her. He had waited for her to grow up. He had waited for this day. So much had already happened. She had been given her family name, kinship and origin through her extraterrestrial body, and with that, also her memories and thoughts. Now she had also been given her true love.

She suddenly felt older and more experienced. Despite tumultuous feelings and impressions inside, she felt confident. She was her own higher self now, almost. Still, some values and thoughts from Earth remained. Do Jortann was laying on his back among the flowers, looking into the sky. He smiled at her: a huge, very happy smile. Once again, she felt his powerful vibrations. He was lying there, completely relaxed and naked. She felt a little self-conscious again and her cheeks turned a deeper pink. Earlier the water had shielded their naked bodies from exposure, but now they were lying there, naked, under the golden sky. The soft skin of their bodies was completely exposed. She thought about his lips. They had kissed her a little while ago and now she wanted to feel his lips on hers again, his body pressed against hers, in a tender embrace. These were adult feelings that had been buried deep within her, that were now exposed. These were the feelings of a mature woman for the man she loves. Lust? Yes, maybe that was the correct word. She overcame her contradictory feelings from Earth, because she wanted to be close to him right now. She wanted to share her happiness about being freed from the bonds of the blocks.

She moved her body and stirred up more of the stardust. She felt dizzy as a new wave of powerful hot feelings rushed through her insides and became a boiling, hot sea in her chest.

“I… I want…I…” She tried again but the words were caught inside her. He turned his open, beautiful face toward her and lifted his eyebrows. He wondered:

“Yes, you want…?”

‘Didn’t he feel it after all? Didn’t he sense what was taking place within her and what feelings were racing through her right now?”

“I want to jo….” A slight blush was playing on her cheeks once again.

“Hhm, what?”

“I want to join you in sacred universal love and spiritual happiness, I want to give myself to you.”

She used old words, taken from the beautiful poems Misha Mojaa had written. Do Jortann became serious.

“Are you absolutely sure that is what you want?” he wondered serenely.

“Yes.”

The answer came out of her mouth clearly and with certainty. She now smiled at him openly and with pure joy. She saw his eyes slowly change colors. First, they turned a brilliant green, but then they became a clear, bright blue. She laughed because she realized how revealing her own eyes must have been for some time now. Her eyes too, were a brilliant blue when she looked at him. Blue was the color of love.

They came closer together and in moving into each other’s arms, they created yet another cloud of stardust. It intoxicated them, and they embraced each other hard when their bodies finally touched. She realized that the stardust enhanced all her feelings. Channie Centara trembled in Do Jortann’s arms, and there was no stopping what was about to happen. They could no longer hide their feelings for one another. They pulled back a little and lay on their sides. His hand reached for hers and golden beams emanated from it as he reached her. The beams entered her body, rushed through her insides, all the way to her chest. She threw her head back and gasped as the force of those feelings hit her. Her chest was on fire and she was filled with lust. They moved closer to one another again and now his entire body was sending beams to hers. Slowly and tentatively, her body responded. Her jubilant soul beamed and those beams emanated from her skin to mix with his. It felt like her body started to glow without getting warm. Her beams met his and they also bathed his body. They became absorbed by his body, where they whirled around within, tickling all his senses. He now experienced the same thing she had felt at first. He had influenced her with his radiance and now she gave him the same experience. The joining between the two had begun.

Slowly the energy they emitted spread around the glade, where they showered the flowers and the trees, bounced back playfully and touched their backs, more powerful than when the rays had left them. They were lying there tightly wrapped in each other’s arms. The All around them absorbed their powerful love. She understood now what he meant when he said that this place lived of love. It really did, because everything around them seemed to grow and the colors became brighter. Every move they made stirred the stardust and it made their feelings even more intoxicating. They pressed their bodies together and their lips met again. This kiss was hot, passionate and fiery and their breathing became rapid. The woman in her reacted and filled her with a strange ecstasy. Maybe it was also sheer desire that filled her. Slowly she invited him to come to her. She opened herself to him in the way every woman has done for the man she loves. She invited him to enter her body. His body found hers and joined hers as it had been meant since the beginning of time. They pulled their upper bodies away from each other and then they slowly slipped out of their bodies. With their souls, they each created a sparkling sphere. While their physical bodies were still on the ground, still moving softly and rhythmically together, their souls soared towards the sky. Up there, their souls slowly and gently merged. For a few seconds it seemed like nature stopped breathing. The birds stopped singing before the greatest wonder of all: love. Their souls became one.

Two souls had now become ‘One’ and like an intensely pulsating sun, they illuminated everything around them and their sun of senses soared higher and higher up on the sky, like a bird. They hovered over the glade and then they flew over the treetops. Far down below, their bodies were still intertwined and in time, they would come to complete the ancient act of love. In their ‘sun-sphere’ they absorbed the finest and purest of all the feelings that emanated from the bodies on the ground below. They only kept the frail, brittle and heavenly feelings; they were like coils of light. Those very special feelings were the only ones that could reach them up there, and it was those purest of feelings that made their sun pulsate and shine.

They soared higher and higher above the trees, away from the island that suddenly became very small down there in the lake. Then they descended, this time above the small temple. The soul and sun they shared, found its way down between the trees and it played in the midst of the bird’s beating wings. They came closer to the white roof of the temple. The roof was made of cool soft stone and they landed there just as if they had been one of the many birds. They lifted their sun again, this time only to descend again, and softly caress one of the straight round pillars of the temple. At the foot of the pillar, they stopped to search for the entrance of the temple. They found a beautifully decorated door that was framed by an arch. They let their sun sweep into the temple that was built by eternal wisdom and love. It greeted them almost like a living being, and it wanted them inside for a moment of their time.

It was cool and brilliantly white inside. Very few had ever been there. Only those who were searching for their spirituality, those who were on the right path, and were close to perfecting their wisdom were allowed inside. But lovers came there too; those who give of their love without a thought, but still with full understanding. Those were allowed inside, but even the birds couldn’t get in there. There was something so sacred about the inner temple that only free souls could fly here. Maybe the only ones who were allowed to come in were the ones who, for the first time, had joined together and created a ‘soul-sun’. Because who can spiritually reach the perfection of wisdom without comparing with, or growing together with, another individual’s soul; through a merging of those souls? We have to see our reflection in others to grow, and we do know that on Earth, but the extraterrestrial way of thinking and acting, is much deeper than that.

Well, the two lovers were there anyway, and together they could sense and see everything. In the middle of the temple, they saw something looking like a baptismal font. It was filled with a red liquid that resembled red wine. Their collective soul was pulled towards it, and they drank from it without disturbing the surface. The sun of the soul reached down once again to take part of the sweetness and nourishment. After that, they ascended towards the ceiling of the temple only to swoop down along its walls. The walls talked to them about eternal love, forgiveness, understanding, comfort in need and immeasurable happiness. The messages and patterns of the white walls shifted before them, to only ‘talk’ about them. The walls were white and so were the words and patterns. The only reason that they would be able to see the words and patterns, was that they seemed to be of a more brilliant white than just white on white, which couldn’t be seen. Even the fact that it was white on white seemed to hold a message for Channie and Do Jortann. The patterns consisted of heavenly spiritual words mixed with coils, images, lines and even maps of the Universe. It all looked like a dream, but it was real nevertheless. Everything pulsated, ignited by the love between the two of them. They realized that what they saw in front of them wasn’t just the Universe, but the All, in all its shapes and forms. The temple seemed to tell them all this. They saw and understood; how and why, they didn’t know. They listened and now they could discern escalating music. The music told them that it was time to leave the temple.

Their sun left the temple and ascended again. It soared with newfound power and strength. Up, up they went. They saw the garden, the lake, and the island from their altitude. Then they descended towards the place where their bodies had reached the wild heights of ecstasy. Slowly their souls separated. A rain of silver was created as their ‘soul-sun’ split into two and they once again became two souls. They carefully entered their bodies again and at that moment their bodies also became ‘one’. Do Jortann’s lips were searching for hers and found them soft and trembling. His tongue found hers, and it was as if he wanted to ‘own’ every single part of her. Their bodies writhed and they clung to each other as if they were drowning in the waves of the feelings that surged through them. Both of them reached the height of what could possibly be accomplished with physical bodies. They both cried out loudly and without inhibitions as if they wanted to spread the last of their lovemaking over the flowers and trees one last time. Then it was all over.

When they finally stood up, as naked as before, there was no blush on her cheeks, and there was no shame either. They looked each other steadily in eyes that were still a brilliant blue. They walked slowly and full of happiness towards the beach and the water. It seemed like the trees in the woods moved their branches to let them pass, walking hand in hand, side by side. They reached the beach. The golden water gently embraced their bodies as they swam towards the middle of the lake. As they reached the middle, Channie Centara shouted wildly with happiness. Those were the last remaining feelings of love that surfaced within her. The feelings reached her throat and mouth; they got wings so they could fly across the water in order to echo, dive and become still on the waves. Channie and Do Jortann swam with powerful strokes and reached the shoreline and the garden. They got out of the water and dressed slowly, then they held hands again. She noticed that there was more substance to her clothes now, and she asked Do Jortann about this.

“You are now wearing one hundred per cent of your physical body. To begin with, you weren’t here one hundred percent,” he said and continued:

“This is not how you are usually introduced to your real body. The way we did this today will make you complete. For every little space of time that passed, you became more complete,” he said with a smile.

She felt now that the question had been superfluous because she had almost all the answers herself. She did now have most of the answers about herself and about how things worked here. She was Channie Centara now, with everything that entailed. She also realized that despite the profound kiss moments ago, and everything they had shared now and before, there were no strings attached. Nothing would make them eternal lovers. There was something else further ahead, that would tie them more tightly to others, than to one another. The happiness they had shared was part of the All; their contribution to positive and spiritual vibrations in the whole Universe. But even knowing this about the future wasn’t painful or hurtful to either of them. They had been given a moment, a profound moment of eternity, to spend together. It was actually as if this knowledge about the future made them stronger and filled them with peace and even more happiness. Because this meant that something even more wonderful waited for them in separate places and since they loved each other, they both understood, and wanted, what was best for the other. Maybe they were both going to meet their soul mates! She thought about the wedding she had been to, and she really wished Do Jortann would get to experience that.

Channie Centara didn’t want to go back now. She didn’t want to get back to her old personality as a human being, with her looks and her wrong-looking body. Do Jortann had to kiss away many bitter tears from her cheeks before she agreed to enter her human body again. Once inside it, she felt that it was abrasive and it just felt wrong. It seemed to chafe a hole in the happiness of her soul. She could remember what had happened even as a human, and that made her cry even more. Knowing that she had to remain the ‘ordinary’ Channie on Earth scared her, even though she knew that this was her assignment. She didn’t want any more of his kisses at that moment. She pulled away from his tenderness and comfort too, since the memories were now becoming dim in order for her to be able to cope with living on Earth. Whatever memories disappeared, there was one thing that was firmly wedged in her; the fact that she was Channie Centara. She was one of them; she was an extraterrestrial. All her feelings on Earth, feelings of not belonging, had been completely true. It was no longer wrong to think the way she had. That everything outside of the Earth was more of a home to her than the ground she had walked on for sixteen years. And it wasn’t so strange that she had been drawn to older people because she had found the ones of her own age, childish. All this depended on her looking for, and feeling more at home with, the wisdom and experience of the older people. She had often felt that people on Earth didn’t understand the simplest things, and sometimes she had wanted to protest loudly, but she had refrained from doing so. She had sensed a higher intelligence within her, but chosen silence in order to not giving herself away, even to herself.

Weeks of silent brooding followed after she got back home. For ordinary people, the plans she was making would be too grand and fantastic to understand. This planning followed her wherever she went. She planned for her meeting with her family and friends. She wanted to travel to her home planet and to once again, see her home. But most of all she was looking forward to get back into her other, true physical body. She was full of small and big thoughts about her own capacity and competence. Those thoughts also filled her with questions. As long as she was on Earth, she couldn’t fully grasp what her other life was about. She couldn’t know and understand everything clearly yet. At least up there she knew how to do many things; speak many languages, sing, fly spaceships. What other gifts did she have? She wasn’t completely sure of herself as an extraterrestrial, and it irritated her that she had so many earthly blocks of her consciousness. Blocks she had never known about before were now making her almost angry because they stopped her. She joked silently: ‘Not only do I suffer from memory loss, but I suffer from a loss of consciousness, when it comes to my entire ‘real’ life and origin.’ It wasn’t as bad as that really, but sometimes it felt like it. This was how it was supposed to be. She would walk on Earth, separated from extraterrestrial warmth and love from all her family. She was supposed to be a half-grown human being, a non-descript sixteen-year old with a, for other humans, secret background, with a secret assignment that meant being who she was, in exactly the place she was and at this time. To assimilate. Because it wasn’t all that easy to be sixteen, very ‘earthly’ and like everybody else; very much a human being. The difference was that she did something that normal sixteen-year olds didn’t do; she was an infiltrator on Earth! A tough job for someone who had just found out who, and what, she really is. The strangest thing of all was to realize that there were a multitude of extraterrestrials like herself on Earth: beings who all had chosen to work for the Earth. She didn’t quite know what she was doing or what she was going to do in the future, but she knew that many more extraterrestrials lived with two bodies, just like she did. One body that slept somewhere on a planet they called home, and one body that walked on Earth, lost and often a little scared. The real physical body out there in the Universe could only be used when the human body was asleep on Earth, since the soul could only be in one place at a time. This meant that for some people on Earth, sleep was liberation, and a ticket home. Some of them had enormous knowledge in the Universe, but as a person on Earth, they would be looked upon as a mere mediocre person. Knowing that she wasn’t the only one to live another life simultaneously made her feel stronger.

She also began to understand why some people, who might not yet know about their extraterrestrial body and origin, wanted to change their appearances in every possible way. Some people keep coloring their hair in an entirely different color than the one they were born with. Maybe this was just an attempt to try to look like their true selves from a far away galaxy. Plastic surgery made a good living out of the seeker’s dream of their true selves. All this was done to create a harmony that sadly enough stopped at an altered exterior and a fake hair color. Some people seek all their lives to find something important, without really knowing what they are looking for. They stumble through their meaningless lives, looking for what? A shadow image, a vision and a dream, too difficult to catch and too far away, like an endless ‘far away’ that can never be reached. All this devastation sometimes stem from one fact alone; that they were not human beings from the beginning and that they didn’t belong on Earth. Some died without ever finding out. That’s when Do Jortann greeted them and made them understand. But if they had realized this before their demise, they would have understood and known. Their lives would have had a greater meaning if they had been given a contact that would have enlightened them about this little simple fact. They could then have given up their searching and they would have been happier, she was sure of that. She was also deeply grateful that she didn’t have to live without knowing the truth.

© 2003 Channie Centara All Rights Reserved