It was a testimony to the emotions his words had instilled in us that no one approached me in my place on the podium. I was reminded of what Dr. Peraster had told me just before he had hung up the phone. "Willow, I am afraid that this Sabbatical is going to be much, much worse than the last."

Finally someone in the front row raised a hand. After the microphone responded to my tap, I called on him. "Can someone bring the gentleman in the front row a microphone? Thank you. Go ahead, sir."

"Thank you. In the light of this news, does the technical capacity to create your nano-scale plasma battery still exist? Is there anything that would stop you from completing it before the end of the Governance?"

I had to think about it for a moment.

When Julius Paine had created the Valuestream, had he been imagining just such an event? The technical specifications for the original battery were still in place on VI's servers. The existence of the battery in space and off the coast of New York was an established fact. Even if they were destroyed tomorrow, the research that had led to their creation would still exist.

"Yes."

An audible sigh spread throughout the audience. A woman near the back let out a nervous laugh. I couldn't help but smile.

"Thank you, Ms. Xiaopi. Would you continue your presentation?"

That is how it went across much of the world. That is not how it went inside of the world's newsrooms.

Reactions from newscasters inevitably called the event "apocalyptic," "catastrophic," and "ill-fated." One hysterical reporter went so far as to call the disappearance of the Governance's current overall leader, "the worst possible event at the worst possible time for the worst possible reason."

Most people just shrugged their shoulders and kept on living their lives.

When pressed by the media for comment, people on the street gave responses like these:

"I have some sympathy for the man, you know. He went from being a no one to the world's richest man in less than a decade. How would you deal with the world caring about your every thought, move, and feeling. I mean really, I would probably want a break too."

"Listen, you could hear the pain in the man's voice when he sent us that letter. Who hasn't been curious about what is going on in all of those secret societies? I know I have. Maybe he is on to something big and will come back to the world with knowledge that we all benefit from hearing."

"He is in an impossible situation. Did you hear they put him under house arrest without accusing him of a crime? I mean for real, when is the last time you saw him alone, without any of the handlers that have been around him since the first time he took off. Seriously, the guy was in a cage; are you really going to blame him for breaking out? At least this time he agreed to let us know he was still alive."

"I'm not going to judge this guy; when I was broke and my kids were starting to get skinny, the guy invested ten grand in startup money for my sewage business. I named my youngest daughter after his mom for God's sake. He hasn't done anything illegal, and he left us all the work that he has done up to yesterday, including that miracle in space. Listen, if the guy is a little paranoid about his privacy, who can blame him? Not me. Not today. Not ever."

Albert Haynes of the Daily Value wrote an editorial in that paper that got much less attention than it deserved. The words themselves didn't really tell the whole story. Like most 'net publications, it gave paying readers the opportunity to comment on the article. People should have paid more attention to those comments.

****

I was young when my family moved from China. My mother explained the move as a grand adventure for all of us. My father told us that we were going to a place where the air wouldn't make you sick.

That move was really the first awakening of my soul. It was the first of many changes that would come in my family; I had nothing but questions and opinions to ask and share. It was the first time that I could remember my parents listening to me with something other than indulgence. Everything that felt so new to me was just as new to them. It made me feel very grown-up. I was nine.

Maybe all children go through what I did; maybe they all watch their parents respond viscerally to their words. Then again, maybe they do not and that is one of the things that drove me to choose a life of research. Julius Paine told the world that everyone could use his Valuestream, but that was not the whole truth. Certainly there was some value that everyone could provide, but the use that he, and later I, would put it to is something that many people can't.

If he were editing my stream he would tell me that sentence is in error. "The fact that they don't does not mean that they can't." As usual his voice in my mind is correct. Since he has been away, I have been hearing his voice more.

I don’t mean that figuratively. I hear his counsel in my mind.

Nor am I the only one who hears it. There have been hundreds of thousands of reports from tens of thousands of people describing the phenomenon. The first reports were bloggers jokingly describing some important revelation that they had. One quipped that the voice of Jules Paine had shocked him from a delusion. A researcher from a community college in North Dakota did the first survey and found over 90 cases where seemingly unconnected writers in 20 countries used very specific language to describe a mental event in their lives.

"These writers all used the language of speech in association with the person of J.T.S.P. There were 25 cases of the phrase "he spoke to me," 10 cases of the phrase "his mental utterance," and 50 cases of the exact phrase "heard his voice in my mind."" The research was initially published in a very small journal on psychic phenomenon. The community college had not invested in an educational copy of the Valuestream, so it took a few months for the research to percolate to an interested market.

That is one thing that the Valuestream provided for everyone; when people have an interested market for their ideas, those ideas tended to grow and spread.

By the time the paper reached the Valuestream, the publication that owned the rights to it had already sold 30,000 copies online. That was more than six times their next most popular paper on "[b]alancing chakras using color therapy and binaural beats." Initial reaction on the 'Stream was intensely positive. Thousands more individuals reported similar events, and the word telepathy was mentioned in over 40,000 posts in 24 hours.

I did not become aware of the research until it hit the bottom of the Valuestream's "front page."

You are as aware of what happens to information on that medium as anyone else, so I'm sure that this doesn't come as a surprise. Sometimes people aren't ready to process information. The front page of the Valuestream is an incredibly valuable asset for some types of research, medical research, market queries, movie reviews, and anything related to comedy. The flip side is that some research does not belong there.

Politicians see research about technologies associated with satellite hardening and protection and remember a briefing once given on the potential for war associated with a high frequency (or was it power? They hear so many briefings) antennae.

Their constituents see their post and start a letter writing campaign about the importance of funding space warfare. Of course, other constituents write their letters condemning the weaponization of space. Overlooked in all of the clamor over spin is the scientific fact that the antenna being developed could not be developed into a weapon.

One result of the appearance of the word "telepathy" on the front page of the Valuestream was the total refutation of modern telepathic phenomenon. A million voices shouted the post off the front page.

At least it seemed that way to the average user. Most didn’t aggressively follow the scientific analysis of the so-called ‘contradictory evidence” to see that it was nearly all scientifically flawed.

Another was the creation of the 'Streamers as an organized movement. It was the true beginning of the ‘religion’ Mr Paine accidentally created.

At that point in my life I was convinced that the comments of articles on the front page represented the worst slice of editorial review in the entire Valuestream. I still am; but I no longer think that means that the comments are unimportant.

As such, I did not read the comments of that article.

What I did instead was write my own report about my experiences hearing the words of Julius Paine spoken in my mind. I painstakingly documented instances where I had thought his words at crucial times in my research career. I speculated about the magnetic forces generated by the brain and their ability to create an environment where imperfect knowledge about the nature of quantum mechanics took over. This flurry of activity was not the first time that I had added my own experiences to my work, but it was, and is the most personal work I have ever created.

I took a paper copy to my advisor; I was a freshman in college. Traditionally, I just sent him a link to a private posting of my research and allowed him full editorial privileges. What made me suspect this paper was different? I know at the time it was just my pride, but as I think back on it I wonder if there was something else.

I remember his reaction. He looked at the title, which I will not share in accordance with standard security/privacy protocols, and his mouth changed shape from his typical relaxed good humor to what I now realize was mild condescension.

To make a long story short, I did not publish it.

He argued that it would have ruined my reputation for the rest of my life, an argument that the part of my consciousness which speaks with my mother's voice readily confirmed. My father's voice was silent.

To this day it remains in my mind that I have committed a little white lie toward the man in the world to whom I owe my career. The paper is still buried in my computer; one day it will see the light of the 'Stream and I will have this weight lifted from my chest.

That night I walked out of my advisor's office holding the paper in my closed fist. I had not often experienced the prods of anger as I did while I walked through my university's tree-covered walkways. When it hit me I remembered the first time that I ever experienced the burning fury that filled my every synapse.

I was a child fresh off the boat in our new home in America. That we had flown here on the world's fastest commercial plane made no difference to some of my classmates, but I had learned long ago that we cannot expect the world to be just. It didn’t help that I spoke better English than most of them. They and their cruel laughter were not the cause of my anger.

My parents and I were sitting at the dinner table. They had asked me what I thought of my first day of American school and listened attentively while I told them that under no circumstances would I be eating school lunch. My father answered the satellite phone in the other room and when he returned there was a tired look on his face. My mother was in the kitchen getting the last course of our meal, so when I asked him what was wrong he told me the truth. "The People's Republic destroyed a military vessel off the coast of Formosa an hour ago. My brother thinks that this means war will come to the oceans of your homeland."

I didn't like it when he looked so grave. It made him look older than his 45 years. "Don't worry daddy," I told him "no thinking man would ever condone a war." For a moment his eyes touched mine and there was a lightness in them that made me so glad. But it was only a moment. My mother's cold laughter pulled his gaze towards her and I thought that her laugh sounded strange; it reminded me of school.

"Sometimes, child, you say the funniest things."

When my father’s eyes darted back to mine I could see guilt in them. But he did not hold my gaze as he told his wife the news from off the coast of the island of Taiwan. If I had been fully aware at that moment in my life I would have learned two things. The first is that mothers can be jealous of their daughters. The second is that not all parents should be role models for their children.

Nine years later as I tried to walk off a feeling of angry molten lead in my stomach, I recalled my first day of American school and the lessons that I had eventually learned. Finally I sat down on a bench. The grass was very green and covered the ground around me except for a swath of rich black soil around the base of a tree and a blanket where two students were watching videos on a laptop. I did all of the centering exercises that I knew.

I separated myself from those emotions and eventually reached a state where I could accept that I was making this choice to protect my future. It took a long time.

I reached what was at that point one of the deepest meditative states I had ever achieved. My father was an adept practitioner and had taught me from a young age. I floated in a very peaceful space where I was aware of much, much more than I could process. Then the headphones popped out of a laptop near me and I heard a snatch of the audio playing there.

"Please rewind that video. I would like to hear what was just said." The power of my voice shocked me; that happens to me sometimes when I meditate.

The couple sitting behind the laptop jumped, but they complied and I heard the by then familiar voice of a young-sounding Julius Paine. "--this is truly a tragic day, a day of violence in the Balkans sponsored by the American government and paid for by the American taxpayer. Some might think our acts justified, but I must disagree. Sometimes you just have to say what people need to hear, so that those people can know that what they need to hear is in the minds and souls of someone, somewhere. No thinking man would ever condone a war, and the power of thinking people is on the ascent. One day, I pray soon, we thinking men will have the power to ensure that war will be a thing of the past."

The video ended with the ubiquitous Valuestream time-stamp. It was from the class of radio broadcasts that he had made as a student years before he made the Valuestream public. I would have been eight when it was made-- no, nine. I had to look it up on my mobile device, but the day that war began in the Balkans was also the day that China sank a ship off the coast of Taiwan.

I uttered some form of thanks to the two who were by now looking at me with serious alarm. I went back to my room and tried to find my calm center.

I couldn't meditate for a month.