Negative Rules for Life

Never get between a woman and chocolate.

Never get between an old man and the bathroom.

Never trust a man who doesn’t  smile at a baby.

                Unless
he’s changing a diaper.

In an election year, never believe what candidates say about
their opponents.

                Only
believe half of what they say about themselves.

Don’t stop to smell the roses.

                Smell
the Sweet Williams, the Lilacs, and the Geraniums as well.

Don’t pass by a chance to help another.

                Their
smile is worth more than the dollar you left behind.

The Christmas Pen

Mary Ellen and Jackie were twins. Not the kind that look
alike and can fool all of their friends and teachers, but the kind that shared
the nine months before their births together in the same place. They had just
celebrated their tenth birthday this past summer and were doing very well in
school this year. Sixth grade was more challenging that the past five grades
but they studied hard and passed all of their tests.

Mrs. Ellis, their teacher, was talking about how important
it was to learn to communicate in the written word, but most of the kids in her
class said that they didn’t think that learning how to write in Cursive could
be much use since everybody texted or typed on their computers. Just to test
them and to challenge them as well she gave them an assignment to produce a
story that would be at least a thousand words and must be handed in written in
cursive.

The groans could be heard all over the school. Mrs. Ellis
said that if they wanted they could work in teams but they must share the
actual writing so that each member of the team “wrote” a fair share of the
story.

Mary Ellen and Jackie looked at each other and decided that
they would make up a team to write a story. Four weeks later just after the
Thanksgiving break all of the students handed in their stories. Some of the
papers were a mess of smudges and whiteouts.  Some of the stories seemed to be rewrites of
stories that had been a part of recent movies.

Mary Ellen and Jackie’s story was different. They had
written a story about three of Santa’s elves who had gotten lost at the North
Pole during a really big snow storm. The elves were freezing and had just about
given up hope when they saw a light in the distance. As they ran toward the
light they saw that it was an angel holding a flaming torch.  Even though the wind from the storm was
blowing the torch didn’t ever go out. Finally after what seemed like hours to
the elves they found the angel holding the torch right in front of the cave
entrance to Santa’s underground workshop.

Mary Ellen and Jackie had taken turns writing the story.
Mary Ellen had drawn a picture of the elves lost in the snow and Jackie had
added a picture of the angel holding the torch. There were no smudges on their
paper and they had rewritten several of the pages to make sure that their final
draft was nearly perfect.

A week later Mrs. Ellis told her class that they had all
done a good job and she hoped that they would continue to practice writing in
Cursive. The story written by Mary Ellen and Jackie was the best of the class
and Mrs. Ellis said that she was going to send it into the local paper, which
was running a Christmas story contest. Everybody thought that it was very
exciting for the twins to be entered into a city wide contest.

The newspaper posted the stories on their internet site and
people were invited to vote on which story the thought was the best. Of course
everyone in Mrs. Ellis’ class voted for the twin’s story. Well almost everyone
since Freddy Willis hated the twins because Jackie had turned down his offer to
take her to the movies. Five days before Christmas the paper published the
results of their contest. The story that Mary Ellen and Jackie wrote came in
first place for the grammar school age group. They received a gift card of $50
dollars to be used at any store in the Mall and their story was reprinted in
the Sunday supplement just as they had written it including their drawings.

It was pretty exciting and their grandparents all called to
congratulate the twins, since their parents had sent copies of the story as
printed in the paper to everyone in the family. Christmas was at the twin’s
house that year and so all of the out-of-town relatives had come to stay with
them for the holidays. One of the effects of that was that the packages under
their Christmas tree were piled almost to the ceiling and the tree was actually
hard to see past all of the colored paper and ribbons.

Everyone got to open one package on Christmas Eve, and then
they tried to make a dent in the pile after they got back from church on
Christmas day. Finally after they had finished Christmas dinner, that required
two gigantic turkeys, they began to see the floor under the packages. The bags
of wrapping paper were stuffed to overflowing and they were sure that all of
the boxes and bags had been opened when one of the littlest cousins crawled
behind the tree and found one last Christmas gift.

It was addressed to both Mary Ellen and Jackie. They tore
the paper away from the box together and then opened the package. Inside were a
shiny golden fountain pen and a note. Mary Ellen read it out loud. It said,

Dear Mary Ellen and
Jackie,

 We all read the wonderful story you wrote
about life up here at the North Pole and loved every word. Please accept this
pen as a token of the joy you brought us. Please share it and use it to write
more happy stories.

Santa

All of the relatives were laughing at the note and then
everyone started to look around the room to see who had sent the pen to the
girls. No one would admit that they had sent the note but the twins suspected it
was their grandfather who had the best sense of humor in the family. He denied
it of course. Jackie passed the pen around so that they all could see what
Santa had sent them. 

Their grandmother said that they would have to be careful
using the pen since it was an ink pen and they tended to drip and smudge. Their
other grandmother said that they would have to buy a bottle of ink to refill
the pen. Mary Ellen asked how they should do that and their grandmother said,
“Why you just put the tip of the pen in the ink and…” She stopped and said, “I
can’t find the little lever that you pull to make the pen fill up with ink.”

She handed the pen to their grandfather who then said, “It
must be one of those pens that use those pre-filled cartridges. All you have to
do is unscrew the pen parts and…” He stopped as well. “There doesn’t seem to be
any way to unscrew the parts of the pen. I guess it doesn’t use a cartridge
either.”

The pen was passed all around the room but no one could
figure out how to refill it. Mary Ellen took the pen and wrote on the back of
the wrapping paper that had covered the box. “The snow showed brightly in the
sun.” The words could clearly be seen on the paper.

It was the twin’s father who said, “I guess you’ll just have
to use the pen and when it runs out of ink we’ll take it to a store that sells
those fancy pens and have them tell us how to refill it.”

That seemed to settle the matter and the family decided to
go back to the table and have desert.

The twins shared a bedroom and they each had a desk where
they would do their homework. They had one computer between them and that sat
on a separate table. The table had a drawer and they put their writing supplies
in that drawer, so that was where the golden pen went after that Christmas.
Every so often one or the other twin would take out the pen and use it to
practice their handwriting. Mrs. Ellis had convinced the girls that they should
keep up their writing skills.

It was Mary Ellen who first decided to use the pen to
complete a writing assignment for school. They had to write a short story that
used the characters from the latest book about young wizards who went to a
summer camp. Jackie went to the computer and began a story about how the boys
at the camp used their wands to cook marshmallows over a camp fire and the
results which occurred when the wands became overheated.

While Jackie was typing Mary Ellen took out the golden pen
and started to write her story in longhand. She wrote about the young wizards
using their wands to go fishing and how they ended up filling their boat with
fish which eventually pulled he boys into the water where they found an
underwater city. The boys made friends with the mere-folks who lived under the
water and a good time was had by all.

Jackie finished typing her story and Mary Ellen went to
their computer to type up the story she had written out on paper. She started
to type the story and suddenly the computer began to take the words from the
paper without Mary Ellen touching the keys. In less time than it would have
taken Mary Ellen to read the story it was finished and the computer printed off
a hard copy without being told.

Jackie hadn’t even finished re-reading her story when she
looked up and saw that Mary Ellen had a copy of her story already done. Jackie
complimented Mary Ellen on her improved typing skills. But Mary Ellen didn’t
know what to say. She was sure that the computer had entered the story directly
from the paper she had written her story on using the golden pen. She decided
not to tell Jackie what had happened. At least not yet.

The school year ended with both of the twins getting
excellent grades. After the summer vacation the twins would be starting Junior
High School. It was there that they had a big surprise. They went to the
orientation meeting with their mom and dad and found out that the twins would
be in separate classes. It would be the first time that they wouldn’t be
together in the same class. It wasn’t that they didn’t do different things
after all Mary Ellen took modern dance after school and Jackie played soccer,
but they had never been separated in school. Their parents told them that it
would be good for them to branch out separately, but the twins weren’t so sure. 

It was on a rainy afternoon while Mary Ellen was at dance
practice the Jackie found herself alone in the house. She had a writing
assignment that wasn’t due for two weeks but she thought that as long as her
soccer practice was cancelled she would start the work. She opened the word
processing program on their computer and started to type when the lights and
the computer went out. It didn’t seem to be raining that hard but something
must have caused the power to go out.

They had battery lanterns in each room of the house so
Jackie just went into her closet and felt around until she found the lantern.
Once it was turned on there was plenty of light for her to work but she didn’t
have the computer to work with. She reached into the drawer and found a pen to
work with. It turned out to be the golden pen that they had gotten at
Christmas. Once she got out a workbook she started to write. The story of the
groundhog family that survived a forest fire just seemed to flow out of the pen
onto the paper. 

She was just finishing the story when Mary Ellen came into
the room. She put down the pen as her sister said, “Mom and I were wondering
where you were. I thought that they might have wanted you to practice in the
rain.”

Jackie was smiling as she said, “No the coach put up a
notice that we would have to wait a few days for the rain to stop and the field
dry off. I was just getting started on some homework when the power went off.
Luckily I had our trusty Santa pen to work with because I just finished a story
for English class when you got home.”

Mary Ellen told her that they had heard on the car radio
coming home a power pole had been hit in the storm but the power company
thought it could be fixed quickly. Almost as soon as she said that the lights
in the room came on and the computer began to flicker.

Jackie said, “I guess they were right about being able to
fix the problem quickly. Now I can type the story into the computer and run off
a hard copy to turn in.”

Mary Ellen looked at the pen her sister was using and the
computer that had just come on and wondered if it would happen again. She said,
“Well good luck. Mom said dinner will be in about an hour so you have that long
to work on it.”

 Five minutes later
Jackie came out of their bedroom and joined Mary Ellen in the family room. She
looked a little confused as she sat down on the couch next to her sister.
Jackie said, “You’re not going to believe what just happened.”

Mary Ellen looked over and said, “Let me guess. The computer
took the story you wrote using the golden pen right from the paper and you
didn’t have to type it in?”

Jackie’s mouth was open. “How did you know?”

Mary Ellen was having trouble keeping eye contact with her
sister as she said, “It happened to me too. I was afraid to tell you just in
case you thought I was crazy.”

Jackie said, “I was afraid you’d think I was crazy. As soon
as I started to type the computer took over and the words just started to fill
up the screen. I went back and checked the story and the computer even ran ‘spell-check’
to correct my ‘their’ and ‘there’ mix up.”

Jackie looked over at Mary Ellen and asked, “Do you think
the computer is magic?” 

Mary Ellen shook her head. “No I don’t think the computer is
magic, but the Santa pen might be. I’ve used the computer for lots of things
and it never does that ‘type-by-it-self’ thing. The only time that happened was
when I used the special pen to write the story out first. Has it ever happened
to you before?”

Jackie shook her head and said, “Nope, this was the first
time.” Then she looked over at Mary Ellen and asked, “Do you think we should
tell mom and dad?”

Mary Ellen had her lips pursed and she seemed to think about
the question for a minute. The she said, “No I don’t think we have to tell
them. I mean this isn’t hurting anyone, and we do write the story before we
turn to the computer to type it out don’t we.”

Jackie was nodding her head and smiling at her sister’s
logic.

Mary Ellen continued, “So let’s just keep this to
ourselves.”

Jackie nodded and the twins shook hands on the agreement.

During the rest of the year and the following one as well
each of the twins used the pen to write several stories. They didn’t say it out
loud but they only wrote happy stories with the pen, just in case the magic
might know what they wrote and stop working if they wrote something bad.

During their freshman year in high school Jackie was working
on a story with the pen and took it to school with her to finish the story on
time. She planned to return home that afternoon and have the computer type up
the story for the next day. But when she got home she couldn’t find the pen.
She looked everywhere and dumped out her backpack as well. The pen was nowhere
to be found.

She started to panic. She turned on the computer and started
to type the story. The words appeared on the screen as she typed them but they
only appeared when she hit the correct keys. There was no magic involved. It
took her two hours to type in the story and then almost another hour to correct
the mistakes she made typing the story into the computer.

Jackie was devastated and was crying when Mary Ellen came
into their room. Her sister came over and asked what the matter was. It took
her a few more minutes to stop crying and tell Mary Ellen about the pen.

Then Mary Ellen realized what Jackie was saying and asked,
“You lost the Santa pen. It’s gone? We can’t use it to write happy stories and
have the computer type them in by itself?”

Jackie started to cry again and answered, “Yes. It’s gone
and I’m the one who lost it.”

Then they both cried for a while and barely stopped in time
when their mother called them down for dinner. The twins were unusually quiet
that night at the table but their parents were wise and knew not to tempt fate
by asking teenagers why they were quiet.

Jackie and Mary Ellen went to school the next day just like
normal. Jackie turned in the story but was almost afraid to let it go since it
was the last story she would ever write using their magic pen. She was
disturbed and even managed to let a goal get past her at the big soccer game
that night.

All weekend the twins tried to find the pen. The looked everywhere
they could think of in the house and checked every pocket in every piece of
clothing just in case Jackie had misplaced the pen and forgot about it. The pen
wasn’t anywhere. It was gone.

The next week came and it was on Monday during second period
that Jackie got the shock of her life. She was sitting in study hall when all
of a sudden something hit her desk. She looked up and there was Freddy Willis.

Freddy said, “Here’s your stinking pen back. I took it last
Thursday to see if it would bring me luck writing the English assignment. The
darn thing ran out of ink as soon as I started to use it to write my story
about the giant robots taking over the town. Take it back and good riddens.”

As she looked at him with her mouth open he left the room
and slammed the door so hard that their teacher went after him in the hallway.
Jackie could hear the teacher shouting at Freddy and telling him he was going
to have a detention for his behavior.

Jackie picked up the pen from her desk and held it close.
She whispered, “I’m glad you’ve come back to me.” She took the pen and wrote,
“Welcome back” on the scrap paper she was using to check her math homework. The
words were clear on the paper. The ink flowed easily from the pen.

That night Jackie told Mary Ellen what had happened with the
pen. Mary Ellen tried and sure enough when she used the pen she could write,
“Sunny days are the best’ with no trouble. They promised each other never to
take the pen out of the house again, and they didn’t.

Mary Ellen continued her love of dance and after college she
left for New York where she joined the New York City Ballet Company. Jackie
continued to write after college and eventually had a series of children’s
books published. Each of the books was hand written by Jackie using the Santa
pen before having the computer type them into electronic form for publication.
She even illustrated the books with a series of pen-and-ink drawings, using the
Santa pen of course.

A 9/11 Story

I got the full story from Eddie who
lived in New Jersey. On that day I was working in an office building in
Washington D.C.

It was still early and there were
only a few people working. Someone in the office had a TV on. All of a sudden I
heard a scream and I knew that something terribly awful had happened. All of us
got up and went over to where the TV was playing. Someone turned up the sound
and I could hear the announcer saying that they thought a small plane must have
gone terribly off course and hit a side of the World Trade Center in New York.

The picture showed one of the World
Trade Center towers and there was smoke streaming out of the building. At first
the camera must have been pretty far off and there really wasn’t any way to see
how much damage the “small” plane had done. I remember thinking that it must
have gotten lodged in the windows of one of the upper stories and the smoke was
from the fuel of the plane.

Everyone started to talk about how
those high rise skyscrapers were death traps because whenever there was an
emergency they shut down the elevators. The tallest building in the capital is
about eleven stories. That’s not exactly a short climb down but a heck of a lot
better than forty or fifty flights of stairs.

Just as the second person started
to tell their “I-can-do-better-than-you” story about being stuck in an
elevator, there was another scream and the one person who was paying attention
to the TV shouted, “Another plane just hit the World Trade Center!” Of course
no one believed it and we all said it must be a replay of the plane hitting the
tower from another direction. It wasn’t.

I remember looking at the clock on
the wall and it was just after 9:00 a.m. I could feel the waves of panic all
the way from New York. There must have been hundreds of people dying at the
same time to send such a powerful message over all that distance. I almost
fainted from the impact of their deaths. I knew that I had to help and I
started to back away from the crowd around the TV.

I suppose a little background would
be good about now. Everyone has certain abilities. Some of us can throw a
baseball really hard. Some can run really fast, and we all know at least one
person who can see really well in the dark.

Some of us can perceive the
emotions of others really well, and some of those can also broadcast emotions
to others. I belong to that group. We are what some have called “Broad-Cast
Empaths.” Just like any other talent the strength of that talent varies from individual
to individual. No one seems to know why we can do what we can do. And as you
might guess we aren’t willing to shout about it to some scientists who would
want to lock us up and run tests until we died of old age.

It does seem to run in families but
not directly from father to son or mother to daughter. The ability begins to
manifest itself in the teenage years. The strength of the ability doesn’t grow
as the person gets older. Usually by about the time the person reaches twenty
they are as strong as they are going to get. 

The young stand out like a bright
lantern on a dark night. As I said it tends to run in families and usually
there is an uncle or aunt around who detects the young practitioner. They will
take them under their wing and teach them some of the basic controls to make
their lives easier. 

All of us can feel the emotions of
others around us. As you can imagine, that can be pretty scary for a teenager
who is just beginning to have their own emotions begin to go crazy. We have to
learn to limit the emotional input, or at least the strength of those emotions.
In the beginning it’s a bit like a slap to the face. Without any controls
you’re being buffeted all day long. I’ve heard of some sensitives who move out
to the Southwestern deserts to get away from the cacophony that constantly
assaults them.

Most of us learn to tamper down the
reception and that allows us to live in the world as it is. Now the other half
of the ability can be just as problematic. A Broad-Cast Empath can be like one
of those huge speakers they use for those out-door concerts. If the young don’t
learn control they can cause panic. Riots at sporting events have been traced
to some teenager who wasn’t being careful.

Both the practical and the moral
controls must be taught as soon as possible. Imagine an out of control teenage
male who suddenly realizes that he can convince some young beauty that she
feels strong affection for him. Of course there are reasonable uses of the
talent. Self-defense will sometimes mandate that when facing a group of toughs
who are about to attack, they should suddenly have an uncontrolled feeling of
fear. That could explain why no one has ever heard of any of us being mugged on
a city street.

This brings up another point. For
the most part we don’t live in large cities. The constant input can be too
challenging even for the best controlled of us. I, like many others, can work
in the city as long as I can get away at the end of the day. I work in our
nation’s capital but live a good deal south of the city to recuperate at the
end of the day.

Another point that may not be
obvious is that we tend not to intermarry.  The constant need to dampen our emotions would
be a strain on the relationship that few could manage. We actually don’t even make
close friendships, that require being near to each other. Eddie, my friend from
New Jersey, and I went to high school together, but he moved North soon after
graduation. Thanks to the internet we have maintained a close friendship even
though we live hundreds of miles apart.

OK enough background. Back to the
story.

I managed to ease out of the crowd
around the TV and got to my desk. I was trying to get on a plane so that I
could help out in New York. No matter what airline I called the lines were all jammed.
I turned on my computer to try to book the first flight north and then a banner
on my browser said that all planes in the U.S. had been grounded. I was just
about to decide to drive up there when I suddenly felt an enormous pressure in
my head and I must have fainted.

A minute or so later I regained
consciousness and thought to myself more planes must have hit the towers and
more people had died. As my eyes started to refocus I saw that the banner on
the computer had changed. It was saying that a plane had hit the Pentagon.  I learned later that hundreds had died in
that crash.

That decided it for me. I gave up
trying to get to New York and instead aimed for the Pentagon. I stepped out of
my office and saw that they were all crowding around the TV. The announcer must
have reported that the Pentagon had been hit and the panic level right here in
the office started to peak and people’s emotions were boiling over. Fear was
filling the office like a dense fog.

I started to let out a blanket of
calm to slow down the emotions of those right in front of me. Luckily it hadn’t
gotten out of hand yet and I was able to slow it down before it was too late. I
could feel the two other Empaths who worked in the building doing the same
thing and we sort of linked up to increase the power of the blanketing.

While it wasn’t all reasonable in the
building it had moved down from a flight in panic. The phones were ringing and
the office manager called out that we had been instructed to evacuate the
building.

That made it easier for me to leave
without being noticed since everybody was heading for the doors as well. Our
three person panic avoidance team effort was working as people began to grab
their things and head out. I waited for nearly a half an hour to make sure that
panic didn’t flair up again. Then I could sense that there were fewer people
around me and the umbrella of peace that we had set up started to close. The
other two must have sensed the same thing and were powering down their effort.

I got my stuff and walked out of
the office. I noticed that the guards at the doors were remarkably calm
considering that they had just evacuated all of the people working in the
building. One of them chided me for lagging behind after the evacuation order
had been given but we both smiled. I walked out and realized that the guards
were going to stay in the building even though it looked like airplanes were
falling from the sky.

I had taken the train to work so I
didn’t have a car available for the trip to the pentagon. I thought I could
take a cab over there, but as soon as I left the building I realized that
wasn’t going to be possible. The streets were in complete grid-lock. No car was
moving, and the drivers for the most part were giving up. A few had left their
cars right there in the street and were trying to get out of the city on foot.

It took only a few minutes to
realize that the subway, which left from Union Station, wasn’t going to be my
way over to the Pentagon. There were crowds of people sitting on the grassy
areas around the station. I could hear them talking about the trains being
stopped and the subway being shut down.

Ok that decided it for me and I
started to walk over to the crash site. As I recall it was only a three mile
walk but it took almost an hour since the streets were all blocked with cars
that I had to scramble over to get out.  There was no movement in the street and I
realized that they must have shut off the lanes that went to the Pentagon.

There were police trying to stop
those who were walking over the 14^th Street Bridge, but a subtle
command to be concerned about the crowds in the other direction let me get past
them. As I got to the bridge I could feel that same sort of collective that we
had established in my building. Here however it was being powered by hundreds
not just three. I could see the affect in the air around the building as I
entered the parking lot. 

There were several master Empaths
controlling the effort. I hadn’t encountered them before but they must have
been in Washington to have gotten here so quickly. I didn’t exactly hear what
they wanted but I just “knew” that there was a weakness in the area around the
above-ground entrance to the subway at the Pentagon. I walked over to that
location and saw there was a crowd starting to panic at the absence of buses
and trains. I could feel about six other broadcasters nearby and I linked up
with them to quiet the growing restlessness.

As I stood there I could almost
smell something I had never smelled before. Without losing my concentration I looked
around to see if there was a fire here at the subway station. I thought that if
there was a fire we would have to get the people away from the site. There were
several ambulances nearby and I could see a medic bending over several persons
who seemed to be smoking. As I cleared my vision I realized that they weren’t
on fire but the smell was coming from those people. I learned later that they
were Empath broadcasters who had pushed themselves beyond the limit and had
suffered strokes. Apparently when we over extended ourselves we actually
“Burn-out” our power.

Newspapers in the following days
would report that seven people had suffered strokes during the attack on the
Pentagon. Five of those died. I managed to visit the two survivors and found
that both were broadcasters. Neither would recover their abilities.

It would be nearly three hours
later that we finally let the cover of calm collapse. By then most of the
people had been able to get away and the firemen were sure that they had
controlled the residual explosions and fires from the plane that had hit the
building.

I was exhausted. I sat there on the
platform where buses had been taking people away from the Pentagon. One of the
emergency workers had left a case of water nearby and I managed to grab two bottles.
It was warm but I didn’t care. I drank the first one down in two gulps, and
poured half of the other one over my head. I almost thought that I would burst
into flames any minute.

There was a strong sense of
accomplishment coming over all of us who were left. I realized that the Empath
Masters who had been controlling our efforts were sending out the “Word” that
we could leave. I noticed that there were fresh minds operating in the area,
and guessed correctly that they had been brought in at the end to do the
emotional “Clean-up” at the site. 

Eddie filled me in on how things
went in New York. I’m ashamed to say that he was the one who called me. When I
got home and the strain of what had just happened simply took over and I went
to sleep. I slept the clock around and woke up late in the night the next day.
I turned on the news channels and found out just how tragic the events were. 

At the Pentagon where I had been
standing for half of the day they were estimating that nearly 200 people had
died. That included all of the people who had been on the hijacked plane.  They still weren’t able to calculate how many
had died in New York, but the estimates were well into the thousands. I fell
asleep for a second time sitting there trying to imagine how Eddie and the
others who must have gotten to the World Trade Center could have survived the
death of all those people.

I woke up to the sound of my phone
ringing. It was the morning of day three. Three days since the worst disaster
in U.S. history. I was still groggy when I picked up the phone. I thought it
was probably my boss telling me I was fired for missing two days of work. It
was Eddie.

As soon as I realized who it was
all I could say was “thank god you’re alright.”

Eddie answered that “Alright”
wasn’t exactly the word he would have used but he was alive. He told me his
story of what happened on 9/11 in New York.

He had felt the same wave of
despair I had when the first plane hit the tower and all of those people died.
Eddie was in the city for a 10:00 meeting and was looking for a parking place
there in the Wall Street area when he felt the deaths of the people on the
plane and in the tower. He said he almost crashed into the car in front of him
and thought he might have passed out for a few seconds. He knew that something
terrible had happened and it had happened very, very close to where he was. He
said he pulled into a space that was marked for handicapped and got out of his
car. He was still woozy but he could tell from the panic that was swelling over
at the Trade Center which direction to go.

As he got to the Trade Center block
he said there were people everywhere looking up at the North tower where you
could see the smoke from the plane. He said he could tell that it wasn’t a
small plane but rather a very large plane that had hit the tower.

There were several other Empaths
right there and so Eddie and the others tried to start calming down the people
in the tower, so that they might be able to get out of the building and not
panic. Eddie said that he realized almost as soon as he started that some of
those Empaths he was trying to work with were in the World Trade Center. He
would find out later that several of those Empaths who were in the building
were in the floors higher than the ones where the plane hit. They were never
able to get out because the plane had blocked all of the stairways down.

Eddie said it seemed like only a
minute later that the second plane hit the other tower. He knew from reports
that it was actually nearly a quarter hour later. When that plane hit all of
those he was working with shut down. That many deaths so close forced them to
control their input to almost zero.

A minute later they could begin to
start up again. By that time others from New York City were joining the team
already working at the site. Eddie said he felt that same sort of shield
forming that I had felt at the Pentagon. At first they were all trying to do
the same thing and then he felt a sort of controlling force and he too realized
that there were Master Empaths on the scene. He felt that he should move
farther south and he walked over about a block to be where it seemed he should
be to complete the shield. 

By then the place was loaded with
more fire trucks and police vehicles than he would ever have thought were in
the city. In a sea of panic the firemen and police were pillars of calm. Eddie
said he could feel them moving around inside the shield as if they didn’t need
any sort of support from the Empaths. The regular people were another matter.

By then Eddie guessed that there
must have been dozens of Broad-Cast Empaths all working together. As time went
on more and more minds joined the team. Some were directed to move farther out
to assist those who were escaping from the disaster. Bridges and streets were
crowded with escapees, and it was important that they keep moving and not block
the escape of the others.

Edie said that by this time the
Empath’s shield was so strong that it was visible to those he was working with.
It varied from blue to purple and seemed to be composed of waves of energy
going both up and down at the same time. He said that the people were streaming
out of the buildings and the firemen were helping them get out. They couldn’t
see inside the building but he could sense their calm going up into the
building.

More and more people were coming
out of the building and several of the Empaths were working to create aisles of
calm that would draw those coming out of the building away from the immediate
space next to the building. While they didn’t want to stay there, they simply
were exhausted from climbing down to the ground. It was necessary to make them
feel as if they had the strength that they really didn’t have to get them to
keep moving away from the towers.

Eddie said he suddenly felt as if he
had been hit with a sledge hammer. When he got up from the ground he saw that
the South tower he had been standing less than a block away from was gone.
There was smoke everywhere and he could hardly breathe. The shield had
collapsed. It was obvious that a number of the Empaths who had been maintaining
the shield had been in the South Tower. They were gone. The numbers of Empaths
who were coming in to help had grown but all had been impacted by the fall of
the tower.

It took several minutes before they
could reestablish the shield. Eddie had taken his handkerchief and tied it
around his mouth and nose, but it barely made a difference in how hard it was
to breathe.  As the shield began to
reform it wasn’t as strong as it had been before the tower had collapsed. Those
who were left could feel others coming closer but apparently it was beginning
to become even more difficult to approach the World Center site. Eddie found
out later that the authorities had shut all of the bridges and tunnels into the
city. A number of the latest Empaths had to force police to look the other way
to get past. Several of the police would report later that they had been pushed
over by the escaping crowds. Their reports were listed as confused since they
had reported that they had been pushed toward the city and not away from it. 

Control of the Empaths actions was
sketchy. Apparently one of the Empath Masters had been in the South Tower when
it collapsed. Sometime later another Master came close enough to the tower to
exert some control. The shield had to be reinforced at the top as the people
trapped in the upper stories of the North Tower were realizing that they were
truly trapped and weren’t going to be rescued. There were Empaths in that group
but hey just carried on trying to keep those they were trapped with from dying
in panic. It was an act of kindness that will remain unknown.

Eddie said that he thought he heard
a cracking noise over all of the other noises in the area around the towers and
then he died.

I stopped breathing when he said
that. It occurred to me that I was speaking with a ghost.

Then Eddie said that he and a
number of other Empaths who had already been weakened by the collapse of the
South Tower had lost consciousness when the North Tower collapsed. It turned
out that over a dozen of them would suffer that fatal stroke that had befallen
those at the Pentagon. Eddie was not one of them.

He said that he woke up nearly a
day later. After the North Tower had collapsed he and a number of others had
fallen into a near death state. More controlled Empaths were able to shut off
the death screams of those in the North Tower. Those Empaths trapped in the
tower gave their last to subdue the effects of their deaths.

One of those who were able to
control the input found Eddie slumped against a wall. He was almost invisible
and was covered in layers of dust and debris. She dragged him farther away from
the site and got a passer-bye to help her get him to her apartment. When Eddie
woke up he was in such a depressed state that she forced him back asleep to
protect both him and her. Nearly twelve hours later she let him wake up and
this time she helped him to control his emotions

He told me that it was one of the
worst times in his life. Added to that was the fact that the girl who had
rescued him was stunning. It was obvious to both of them that Eddie had to put
some distance between them for both of their sakes. He managed to get back to
his own place in New Jersey and got some more rest. Then he did the same thing
I had done and listened to the reports of what he had been a part of. When he
heard of the attack on the Pentagon he called me to see if I was alright. 

Apparently the shield that he and
the others had created had blocked out the effect of the deaths at the
Pentagon.

We have talked a number of times
since that day but not about what happened on 9/11.