The Apprehension

“Very well, John!” Adju’s voice, calm and knowing, resonated through the profound stillness of OrTerra’s interior. In an instant, the Grand Canyon walls vanished, and they were back. Not just anywhere, but precisely within the familiar confines of John’s Dad’s living room. The air here was thick with a palpable anxiety, made manifest by the relentless, rhythmic pacing of his father. John Senior, ravaged by severe rheumatoid arthritis, navigated the room with the halting, painful shuffle of age and infirmity, a stark contrast to John’s newfound effortless existence.

“I… I need a moment with my Dad, Adju,” John murmured, the words tinged with a complex mix of urgency and tenderness.

“Here, put this on,” Adju replied, his arm extending, not with physical reach, but with a gesture that brought a shimmering object into existence before John. Adju carefully placed a sleek, metallic bracelet around John’s wrist. “This device, this bracelet, is called an amorganon. When you leave here, you will remain in stasis—unseen, untouched, unheard—until you press this specific symbol on the device.” Adju’s ethereal finger pointed to the same intricate, hand-like emblem that had marked his entry into OrTerra, now glowing softly on the bracelet’s surface. “It is the only way to communicate with me while you are away from OrTerra. And be careful, John; when you press this button, you will no longer be in stasis. You will instantly become visible, physical again. So you may wish to place yourself somewhere that is more secluded before activating it.”

John walked to the front door of his Dad’s house, his movements still impossibly light, and took a quick, silent look around the quiet street. No one. He then pressed the designated symbol on the amorganon.

The transition was instantaneous and profound. All at once, his bodily functions came rushing back, a flood of sensation. He felt the sudden, crushing weight of gravity, as if 180 pounds had just been strapped to his shoulders. And in fact, they had been. The familiar aches, the subtle fatigue of a day of climbing, the gnawing hunger—all returned with an almost startling clarity.

His Dad’s front door, always unlocked, yielded silently. “Hello, Dad!” John called out, his voice now a physical vibration, as he stepped into the living area.

His father, mid-stride in his anxious pacing, stopped short, his frail frame trembling. “My God, John, where have you been? You’ve given your old man quite a startle.” The words were laced with relief, but also a deep, bone-weary worry.

“I’m sorry, Dad. It’s a very long story. You sit down and rest.” John moved quickly, his own physical presence feeling heavy, cumbersome after the effortless grace of stasis. “I can’t stay. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I’ll be back and explain everything as soon as I can.”

“Okay, Son,” his Dad said, his voice still shaky as he lowered himself carefully into his armchair. “Have you called Samantha? She’s pretty worried.”

“No, Dad! My phone isn’t working.” John patted his empty pockets, a gesture of frustration. “I’m going to see her right now. Love ya, Dad.” He bent to embrace his father, feeling the thinness of his bones, the fragility of his physical form, and then left as quickly as he had appeared.

Back outside, the Amorganon shimmered on his wrist. “Can I put an address into this thing, Adju?” John thought, projecting the question.

“Yes, John. OrTerra has access to all of Earth’s databases,” Adju’s voice, a clear thought within John’s mind, replied instantly.

John concentrated, inputting his fiancé’s address into the device with a mere thought. Sure enough, in another impossible flicker of transition, they were there, hovering unseen in Samantha’s living room. But the room was empty. No sign of her. “I’m in trouble now,” John thought, a genuine wave of anxiety washing over him. “What can I do to find her?”

“Well, John, we could simply call using OrTerra’s communication capabilities,” Adju offered, his tone suggesting a ready solution. “But perhaps this is a good opportunity for another lesson.”

OrTerra, locate the person that frequents this establishment and navigate to the current location of this individual. The thought, imbued with John’s command, was barely formed when the world shifted again. In an instant, they were at the local police station, the familiar hum of its controlled chaos surrounding them. And there, by the front desk, was Samantha, her back to them. “Okay, Adju,” John thought, a wry amusement coloring his voice, “you can explain that trick later. I have to get out of here.”

John stepped out onto the familiar tile floor of the police station. As his foot met the ground, the internal expanse of OrTerra, and Adju himself, simply vanished behind him, a seamless, utterly complete transition. He was aware of everything: the murmur of voices, the sharp crackle of police radios, the hustle and bustle of people everywhere. He could hear Samantha’s worried voice as she spoke with someone. But no one, absolutely no one, could see John. He remained in stasis.

A quick scan of his surroundings, a mere flicker of thought, revealed a restroom a short distance down a small hallway. He felt a sudden, almost childish pleasure as he walked directly through the closed door, the solid wood offering no resistance to his immaterial form. Inside, the small room was empty. Safe. With no one present, it was safe to press the button. “What a rush,” he declared aloud, the words for his ears only. His first thought, a familiar human dilemma, now weighty in his mind: What was I going to tell Samantha?

John opened the bathroom door, its physical reality now responding to his touch, and headed straight for her. “Hello, Samantha! I am so sorry I worried you. I’m okay!”

She was on the phone, her voice tight with concern. “Where on earth have you been, John? I’ve been worried sick, and so has your Father. He just told me you were okay and that you just left him.” Her eyes, though relieved, were still clouded with confusion.

“He’s here now, George!” she said into the phone, her gaze fixed on John.

“Well, that’s impossible,” a voice crackled from the receiver, audible even to John. “He just left no more than two minutes ago.”

Samantha sighed. “Well, he’s got a lot of explaining to do. I’ll talk to you later, bye.” She ended the call, her eyes narrowed. “Okay, John. Do you want to explain that?”

He had to think of something, and very quickly. His newly enhanced mind churned, sifting through plausible (and implausible) scenarios. “My Dad obviously has dementia,” he blurted, a half-truth, but one that offered a convenient narrative gap. “That’s a little crazy, don’t you think?”

“Okay, I guess!” Samantha replied, though her expression showed lingering doubt. “So, where have you been?”

“I was climbing and had an accident,” John improvised, drawing on his earlier explanation to his father. “Nothing serious, but I lost a rope and couldn’t climb back to where my truck was parked. I had to rappel down a steep cliff and couldn’t get back up the other face of the mountain until this morning.”

It was all he could think of, a tapestry of half-truths woven around a central, impossible lie. He would tell her everything, later, when they were truly alone, truly safe.

Samantha, surprisingly, seemed to buy the story. And so did the uniformed officer nearby, who had been subtly observing. Not because it was a particularly good story, John realized, but because the police station was awash in a torrent of far more pressing, chaotic events, and the officer was quite pleased to close this “missing person” case with such convenient dispatch.

John was anxious, almost desperate, to get home, to process the overwhelming revelations of the day. But Samantha was in another zone entirely, caught in the undertow of the day’s earlier, more mundane horrors. John, in his haste to make himself visible, had overlooked a large part of the precinct’s inner workings, failing to register the full scale of the commotion, and more importantly, the sheer number of people.

Samantha took him aside, her voice low and urgent, and explained. A young girl had been abducted on her way to school that very morning. She had been walking with her sister when a man pulled up in a van, snatched the younger sibling, and sped away. The remaining sister, traumatized, couldn’t provide a license plate number, nor a clear description of the van or the man.

“I know this little girl!” Samantha exclaimed, her eyes wide with shared grief. “She lives just down the street from my home. What a terrible day this has been, worrying about you, and then I found out about this when I came down here this morning. I wish there was something I could do!”

Now, John was in his zone. The true purpose of OrTerra, the immense potential of his new role, crystallized within him. He knew exactly what he needed to do. He could find this individual, this abductor, in a heartbeat. With OrTerra.

“Samantha!” John said, his voice firm, resolute. “Listen, I have to catch up on some things.” He saw her about to offer to get her car. “No, you stay here and do whatever you can. My truck is outside. I’ll call you as soon as I’m back to normal!”

Samantha, thankfully, bought the hastily constructed excuse, and, with a wave of relief, did not insist on coming outside.

He kissed her, a quick, reassuring gesture, and then darted off towards the exit. He glanced back, saw that Samantha was momentarily turned away, and decided it was best to switch this thing back on somewhere more secluded. He quickly changed directions, veering into the men’s restroom. No one was in sight. Bingo. In an instant, with a mental command to the Amorganon, John was in stasis again, invisible, immaterial.

“What a rush,” John remarked again to himself, his voice a private thought. “I could get used to this very easily!”

John took a couple of steps, passing effortlessly right through the wall of the restroom. And there he was: right back in OrTerra, the vast, impossibly beautiful interior of the vessel surrounding him.

“Adju, I need your help!” John projected, the words now pure thought. “A young girl was taken against her will. Is there a way to find her quickly?”

“Yes, of course, John,” Adju’s calm reply filled his mind. “We only need her DNA.”

“Go back to the police station, Adju.” John’s thoughts were rapid, decisive. “There!” he exclaimed, his attention fixed on the weeping Mother. “The doll in her Mother’s arms, can you scan that doll for the little girl’s DNA?”

“Yes,” declared Adju.

In a matter of seconds, Adju performed the impossible: he scanned Kerry’s doll, isolating her unique genetic signature. The history control panel, the anaphero, shimmered into focus, its parameters shifting with breathtaking speed. And then, there they were, no longer in OrTerra, but standing, unseen, within the very home of the abductor. From a nearby bedroom, the faint, heartbreaking sound of a small girl’s voice: “Please leave me alone, I want to go home.”

Within the room, sitting on a small, unmade bed, was a man. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, with a muscular build and thick, dirty black hair. He was bending over a small, fragile-looking eight- or nine-year-old little girl, who was desperately trying to push him away. “I won’t hurt you, I’ll take you home, but only if you’re quiet and do what I tell you,” the man muttered, his voice a low growl, as he tried to stroke her long blonde hair with his hand.

“Okay, Adju, what are my options here?” John thought, his heart pounding with a righteous fury.

“Let’s see,” Adju remarked, his voice thoughtful, analytical. “Your first option would be to leave OrTerra in your physical form and confront this individual. The quickest and safest option though, for the girl, would be to leave OrTerra in stasis—as an energy form—and place an amorganon on the young girl.”

John, glancing at the device on his wrist, sent a query to Adju: “You have more of these things?”

“Yes,” replied Adju.

Adju quickly pointed to the amorganon on John’s wrist. He explained that by pressing the small, circular protrusion from within the sunburst symbol, a duplicate amorganon would instantly appear.

John pressed the button. Magically, another amorganon shimmered into existence, sparkling as though it was just waiting to be taken from his wrist. John wasted no time. He moved with a speed born of urgency across the room and, unseen, placed the shimmering bracelet onto Kerry’s wrist.

As if he had been struck by an invisible force, the abductor stumbled back, a look of profound astonishment contorting his face. Kerry had, of course, disappeared in an instant, vanishing right before his eyes even as his hand was grasping her arm.

It was immediately obvious to John, by the look of wide-eyed astonishment on Kerry’s face, that she could see him. In that single, bewildering instant, she had experienced John appearing out of nowhere, the sudden release from her abductor’s terrifying grip, and the look of unadulterated horror on his face. And, of course, the sudden, overwhelming feeling of relief that came from the loss of all her physical hindrances, the weight of her body suddenly gone.

John was just beginning to speak, to offer some words of comfort, but she quickly blurted out the words, her voice tiny, yet clear: “Are you an angel? Am I dead?”

“No, sweetie,” John replied softly, his voice a thought directed to her mind. “I’m not an angel, and you’re not dead. And everything is going to be okay. He can’t see you, and he is not going to hurt you anymore. I’m going to take you to your Mother.”

“Why can’t he see me?” she asked, a complete calm settling over her, a curious child now, rather than a terrified victim.

“We’ll talk about that later,” John said, gentle but firm. “Let’s get you back to your Mother first, okay?”

John motioned for her to come with him, and she followed, a small, insubstantial shadow, stepping with him into the vast, gleaming interior of OrTerra.

Adju was there, his ancient form seeming to shimmer with warmth. He was very gracious, and seemed excitedly anxious to meet her. “It is my pleasure to meet you, Kerry Albertson,” Adju exalted, his voice a melodic resonance in her mind, as he graciously extended his hand in an attempt to shake hers. She giggled, a tiny, joyful sound, as their hands met and she experienced, for the first time, the ethereal touch of two energy forces meeting each other. “Are you an angel too?” she remarked, looking from John to Adju.

“Oh no, I’m Adju!” he replied, his tone filled with ancient, benevolent amusement.

John, noticing Adju’s evident admiration for the child, smiled. Politely, but with a new sense of urgency, he whispered, “Back to the police station.”

Instantly, they were back. Kerry immediately noticed her Mother, a frantic beacon in the midst of all the fuss and commotion, and rushed over to hug her. But then, a sharp, confused cry escaped her. “What’s wrong? Why can’t I touch my Mom?”

John felt a sudden, heavy weight of responsibility. He had a lot of explaining to do. What would he tell Kerry? How would he possibly explain all this to her, and for that matter, to everyone else?

“Kerry,” John said, his thoughts clear and direct to her mind. “I know this all seems very strange to you, and I will explain all this soon. But for now, I want you to not tell anyone about Adju and me. No one would believe you anyway. Follow me!”

John led Kerry into the police station restroom, first checking to ensure no one was inside. “I’m going to take this bracelet off your wrist,” he explained, his thought-voice calm. “And when I do, you won’t be able to see or hear me anymore. Open that door and go straight to your Mother. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” replied Kerry, her small face serious, yet utterly trusting.

John removed the bracelet. By the sudden look on Kerry’s face, he could see that she felt the immediate, disorienting surge of weight as her physical form returned. He saw the surprise in her eyes, the sudden realization that she could no longer see him, and that she was now, physically, alone.

She took a deep, shaky breath, her gaze fixed on the door, then quickly opened it and ran straight to her Mother, a small, tangible figure re-emerging from the impossible. Seeing that Kerry was safely back in her Mother’s arms, John returned to OrTerra, the familiar, comforting expanse of the vessel once more surrounding him.

“Adju, I need to return to my truck,” John thought, a new urgency seizing him, “but first, we need to do something about that creep we just left before he hurts someone else. Even if we tell the police where he is, there’s no proof that he kidnapped her.”

“Of course there’s proof,” Adju remarked, his voice resonating with a quiet certainty.

Suddenly, they were no longer within the confines of OrTerra. The rising sun was casting long, nascent shadows down the very street where Kerry had been abducted. The Anaphero’s time indicator, shimmering in their perception, showed precisely 7:10 AM. There, directly in front of them, was the white van. And beside it, Joshua Slogan, the abductor. He was so close to John, John felt he could have reached out and touched him.

They watched as Slogan pulled Kerry, struggling and kicking, into the van. He slapped her hard across the face, the brutal force of his blow knocking Kerry all the way to the back of the van. “You son of a bitch!” John blasted out, a purely mental scream of fury, as Joshua Slogan climbed back into the driver’s seat. The van peeled off, its tires spitting gravel, disappearing down the street as John foolishly, instinctively, tried to strike him, his immaterial hand passing harmlessly through.

The van was moving now, speeding down the street, making sharp turns, crossing intersections, traversing bridges, and plunging through tunnels. Adju and John were never more than a few feet away from Kerry, witnessing every terrifying second, until finally, the van pulled up to a house and into a garage. They both watched, helpless in this historical playback, as Kerry was carried into the house. The time indicator was now showing 9:30 AM, only 55 minutes left until they would be back in the present. As the time now moved swiftly towards the present, John felt a fleeting, profound sense of relief that Slogan hadn’t had the time to harm Kerry with more than a slap.

“So where is the proof, Adju?” John asked, his voice still tight with the lingering horror of the witnessed abduction.

“You have just witnessed the abduction, John,” Adju replied. “It is a simple matter to replicate the same observation by way of, ah, what you would call a recording, and send it to the proper authorities.”

“A simple matter?” John thought, incredulous. “Yes, you have a form of communication you call email?”

“You mean you can send this entire recording by email to the police? But, it would be enormous in size! And how would they play it? It’s 3D, it’s a hologram, for Christ’s sake!”

“You have much to learn, John, about OrTerra,” Adju said, his voice imbued with ancient patience. “The entire sequence can be compressed to a very small size and opened with no need of a player.” Adju merely smiled, a knowing glint in his eyes. In another instant, the email, containing the irrefutable, immersive proof of the abduction, was delivered to the officer in charge of the investigation.