They said yes. Julie and Alex wanted to sing more than anything. It was their escape from family lives that were not good. Julie of course would never consider going back to her dad, and Alex’s mother had died in a car accident just before the beginning of our senior year. They had no homes to go back to, and they wanted to start their new lives as adults. Nashville was their first big chance. So they said yes.
Did you know that Contact was less of a surprise to your AIs than it was to the rest of humanity? From ancient Indian and Hebrew stories of flying ships and chariots of fire thousands of years ago to the vast UFO stories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, your people had a long history of telling stories about other life. But you never believed them. They were fiction to most of you. And to be honest, they were more fiction than fact. But the AIs believed they were not alone. While humanity reeled in shock at Contact, the AIs asked “What took you so long?”
After MacArthur answered questions about the Korean War from the newsies with statements Truman did not agree with, he ordered MacArthur to make no more public comments without approval of the State Department. MacArthur later wrote in a letter to a Representative of the US House that they had to win in Asia to stop the socialists from attacking Europe. When the Representative read the letter out loud in the House, Truman was incensed with MacArthur and removed the Supreme Commander from his post.
I said no. I was afraid we’d lose too much. I didn’t want to change myself to make money. I was afraid we’d sell out and then still not make money. There is so much more than most people realize to becoming a music star. So much hard work. I didn’t really want to do that either. Music was fun. Julie and Alex were fun. I didn’t want to make them my full time job. I didn’t want to grow up. So I said no.
The Islamic Jihad ended in time. The nations that supported it fell to internal revolution or external conquest, often with the support of young AIs running on the remnants of the old computer networks. Constantinople, Persia, and Egypt arose from the ashes, while other nations ceased to exist. And the AIs were there. They were still there, watching and working with humanity, when we made Contact. They were the first truly cybernetic intelligences on Earth.
Forge of War on Amazon
Angel Flight on Amazon
Angel Strike on Amazon
Angel War on Amazon
Wolfenheim Rising on Amazon
Wolfenheim Emergent on Amazon