Free Intelligent Design: Revelations to Apocalypse by J. M. Erickson Page B

then he smiled and handed her the tablet while offering to take her wine with his other hand.
    “It’s a little heavier than it looks.”
    She exchanged her wine for the tablet. It did feel heavier than she expected, and unlike a regular tablet or smart phone, had no visible buttons, slides, or controls. Both sides looked and felt like a polished, flat stone—perhaps light marble or granite. She’d never seen anything like it before
.
She turned the phone over again, looking for the screen housing.
    “The screen is on the other side and is activated by you looking at it.”
    “Oh? That’s pretty high tech for a therapist like you.”
    Riesman looked at the stone, and a low, green light began to pulsate slowly. She held it firmly in both hands, and warmth flowed through her fingers, but the rich green light intrigued her more. The more she looked, the deeper into the depths of the object it drew her. The light grew, and her fingertips heated further, but it aroused curiosity and puzzlement, not alarm. A vivid sensation came over her of a dark, warm, protected cavity, then a constriction followed by a rush of cold air that embraced her whole body. A cough, a sharp slap on her buttocks, then an image of her mother’s beautiful blue eyes looking down on her.
    Mum? You’re so young …
    More images and sensations flew by. She saw herself as a little girl entering kindergarten, falling off her bicycle and being picked up by her father and sister in third grade, the strong smell of cow manure, and the rush of riding her favorite horse. She saw herself delivering her first calf on the farm, followed by driving her family’s tractor in the corn field on a brutally hot day. She saw and felt the neighbor boy’s very first kiss. Middle and high school flashed through her mind, as did her first orgasm. Cold days, hot nights, and warm beer came and went, as did visions of her first day in officer training; all the ways to a firefight in Iran. The flashes came faster, and so did the days and nights of her past: some tender visions, others of dead friends and soldiers. She felt intensely throughout the experience: happiness, pain, tenderness, fear and sorrow. A vivid image of meeting Perez arose, and one of her running her first clinical group, followed by completing her doctorate and explaining to her parents why she was not moving back to Wyoming.
    More visions came—various assignments, friends and lovers— and only slowed at her appointment to FEMA and the news of Perez’s family tragedy. They sped up again with tense, sad moments at her mother and father’s funeral, and she watched her nieces and nephews grow before her eyes. The visions slowed again at her last lovemaking with Hiaki, attending his funeral, lunch with Perez, her meeting with the Administrator and agents. Finally, she saw Agent Lee making sure that the audio devices and internal tracking system was as comfortable as any large tampon.
    Riesman shook her head. The green light blazed brighter. Her hands shot to her eyes, and the tablet clattered onto the floor. Her knees weakened, but Perez’s strong arms caught her before she fell.
    “I got you.”
    She rubbed her eyes and blinked. It worked well. Her vision cleared quickly and the heat subsided from her fingers.
    “What the hell was that, Perez? Thanks for the warning …Does … does it always do that?” It took her a moment longer to regain her balance, sight and wits.
    “Only sometimes,” Perez replied.
    “It can give me a nasty static shock on dry days like this.” He checked that she could stand alone, then stepped away.
    Static shock? Are you kidding me? It was something much more than that.
    Perez picked up the tablet and looked at it briefly. Surprisingly, the glossy surface displayed no finger prints, and no dents or damage from its drop to the hard marble floor.
    “I’m sorry, Bobbie Jo. The tablet also has a biochemical defense mechanism. I thought I’d turned it off, but by your