Somewhere in the middle of that first night spent in Old Orleans on the couch of the apartment where Mattie 3.0 stayed, I was awakened by a sound I hadn't heard in years -- decades even.
And I wasn't referring to the fact that my life had been fast-forwarded some sixty-plus years once I stepped through the portal that my cell phone had created that had sent me there in 2084. Even back at the turn of the millennium, the distinct ring-buzz-whirr of a fax machine was an antiquated noise.
Sure enough, though, "Brother Bain", as Mattie 3.0 had called it, received a response from his IntransiGent contact under the cover of night. I wanted to get up off of the couch and head to the refrigerator and slide it out of its nook and spin it around to retrieve the old-fashioned missive, but I knew from watching him send a note the night before that they were also using a glyph based code for which I had no key.
I slept fitfully -- and I later deduced that the sound of the fax machine had likely made me recall the life I had left behind for the first time since embarking on this journey. All the excitement I had experienced on the boat ride from the Florida Isles on the trip to East America had kept me focused on what I was learning and doing and seeing for the first time.
In the early hours of that morning of that first night in those environs was also the first time I wondered how it would be that I would return. The concept of "astral projection with a corporeal element" had been explained to me, so I had grasped that I could exist back in my original time as Troy AND in this new age as Ilion (the name I had taken for myself) AND as the sum total of my IQ, EQ and SQ files living on within the Vitalnet.
Without access to the information in those files, though, me-as-Ilion began to worry how -- and when -- I would one day rejoin me-as-Troy ... and how that life, if again intertwined, could ever be the same again.
Eventually, Mattie 3.0 walked in to the living room and his presence drew me out of my disturbing thoughts.
"Morning!" he said, with a smile.
It would have been polite of me to respond in kind. Instead, I just pointed to the refrigerator and mumbled. "Brother Bain has spoken."
With that, I promise to share more about that morning the next time I'm able to send a communication to you on the last day of the month when I can take advantage of the loophole as the Vitalnet updates. Until then, I remain Ilion using Troy-in-2019's social media to share news of the future with you ... in small bitesize pieces ... only when possible.
