A rogue wave, large and foaming, vaulted up from an empty sea, slammed into our sailboat with the vengeance of an angry god and sent us reeling to the bottom. We were below decks and did not see it, but we sure as hell felt it.
        It caught us with four sails flying and the galley entrance wide open, five of us on a fifty-two foot sailboat, midway between the Galapagos islands of Isabela and Santa Cruz. Nicole and I and a young friend went down with the boat, but as regards the other two, I have no idea what happened to them. At the time my thoughts were diverted by the sound of our mast and rigging being ripped away, by the rapid inversion of the cabin and by the enormous quantity of seawater rushing in upon us. The Titanic could not have moved faster toward the sea bottom than we, yet all we could think to do was stab out at any handhold that presented itself: a twisted floor panel, a table leg, each other. When we hit, it was with such force that had it not been for the cushioning effect of the trapped water, we would have died then and there.
        A pressure began building in my ears, the intensity of it proof enough that we were further down than was healthy. I shouted to the others that we had to get to the surface before the accumulation of pressure on our bodies made it impossible to do so-too long at this depth and a mortal dose of the bends would be our only reward. Taking my words to heart, our young friend dove for the submerged galley opening but managed only to get himself stuck in the clutter brought about by the wave and its aftermath. In spite of our efforts to free him, he drowned, leaving a shocked Nicole and me to wonder, not only what we might have done to save him, but what we might do to save ourselves. I managed to free the poor fellow but spent some forty minutes in the doing then another ten clearing the debris so the same thing would not happen to us. By then, of course, it was too late.
        As a diver I am at best an amateur, but I knew a dash for the surface was no longer possible, not after an hour at this depth, which I guessed to be a hundred feet. To get there safely required two hours, perhaps more, of slow assent, and without scuba tanks that was unrealistic. Shock slipped into fatalism as I glanced at Nicole and wondered in what manner we were now doomed to exit our lives, suffocation or drowning. My thoughts must have been reflected in my eyes, but to her
credit, she only smiled, a sad smile, but also one of courage. I tried to match it, even as my mind
searched for a way to avoid the worst of our pathetically short future.
        Two additional hours passed before finally we admitted to ourselves that it was hopeless. The air by then was beyond stale and our breathing labored, the combination a pronouncement that it
would not be long. I thought of the first aid cabinet, under water but within reach, my idea being for
us to swallow whatever pain killers might be there then hope enough time remained for them to find
their way into our blood streams. I did not follow through on this because at that moment something
entered our cabin.
        The equatorial sun, which even at a hundred feet provides some light, was now below the horizon, making it easy for a swelling imagination to misinterpret the cabin flotsam drifting slowly and silently beneath the water's surface. But there was no mistaking the dark body that eased its way into the galley then circled my feet as if unsure which leg to devour first. I estimated it to be three feet long, not especially dangerous for a shark unless it had friends to call upon for support. I aimed a kick in its direction and was pleased when this resulted in its quick turn toward the exit. The pleasure, however, was short-lived.
        As if suddenly aware of how much it was in control, it turned back then resumed its pattern of
circling, bringing me in desperation to grab a piece of floating wreckage then jab out at it again and
again. My success was no better than before, but this time a feeling swept over me that made
nonsense of what I was doing. In a flash, I was no longer alarmed, certainly not as when the
shadow first appeared. In addition, I had the odd sensation that what I was doing to it, I was also
doing to myself. It brought me to let go of my make-shift weapon and mentally back away, thus
inviting the ghostly creature to do what it wished. When it gave me a nudge, my response was only
to wonder at my calm.
        Then its head broke the surface.
        For a long moment, nothing changed. Except, that is, for the hint of understanding that passed
between us, the "us" to include Nicole--somehow I knew she was participating. The creature was
at once familiar and alien. I appreciated the fact that I was in the Galapagos, where evolution
marched to the beat of a different drummer, but the species in front of me did not appear in any
guide book I had ever seen. My immediate thought was of an iguana, similar to the land and marine
iguanas one finds all over these islands, but then I counted the differences, some of which were
critical. The limbs, for example; they jutted downward from a slim, reptilian body but more closely
resembled the arms and legs of a human than the limbs of a traditional iguana. There was webbing
at the end of the forelimbs, sensible for a creature who pushes itself through sea water, but this was
connected to very convincing fingers, each of which moved independent of its neighbor--it had a
gripping ability similar to our own.
        The most critical difference suggested even more of a similarity to humans. The creature had a large brain. I could not see this, of course, but I assumed by its large cranium--half of its body was
cranium--that it was there, that it possessed a mental capacity far above that of its well-known
relatives. More telling was the fact that it was communicating with me.
        The lighting inside the cabin was reluctant at best but there was no doubt about what I was seeing.  About to turn to Nicole to verify that she saw it as well, I suddenly knew that she did--it was as if I were privy to her thoughts. I also knew that the fear she'd felt only moments before was no more. I wondered the why of this, even as I welcomed what replaced it, a calm that coaxed the horror of imminent death into nothing more than an interesting possibility.
        We did not speak, Nicole and I; we did not have to; we knew. We knew everything, even as we had not yet thought to ask the right questions. We knew this creature would not hurt us, at least not more than we had already hurt ourselves, and we knew that it understood not only the dilemma we faced, but who we were and how we had come to be there. It offered nothing by way of expression, but we knew it was not enjoying the same level of calm as we. Not that it was upset; it was more that it saw no need to tranquilize itself as it was tranquilizing us.
        We wondered how our brains, Nicole's and mine, could be operating as one. Wondered, but
nothing more than that; there was no sense of oddity about it, only curiosity. The frown on our faces must have revealed this curiosity, but we received nothing in response other than a quick
twitch of the creature's head. Unsatisfactory as an answer, this produced within us a perceptible
weakening of the calm. The creature moved to counter it--we could feel this happening--but the
experience was enough to make us to wonder what we really had. Were we at peace because
salvation was upon us, or were we enjoying an emotional tranquilizer designed only to carry us
through an otherwise painful extinction?
        In time we became aware that the light inside the cabin was greater than before, and continuing in our detached mode, we added this to our "things to wonder about." Then we realized it was not daylight we were seeing, it was simply ... light. Where it was coming from, we were not to know.  We examined the creature in front of us but could see no glow emanating from any part of it.
        A webbed hand rose from the water and snaked toward me, the suddenness of this bringing
another crack to my emotional armor--as before, it was short lived. Its touch, discomforting at
first--to it as well as to me, since it pulled back momentarily before resuming--soon became that of
a friend reaching out in a moment of need. I felt this again as the hand moved toward Nicole.
        In sharing thoughts on this, thoughts that were pictures rather than words, Nicole and I took a
moment to marvel at the efficiency of our new talent, at how with so little effort we were able to
make ourselves known as we had never been able to do before. It inspired us to the point where
we tried projecting images to our unlikely companion, in effect asking how we might escape the
combined peril of waning air and excessive depth. How much the creature understood we did not
know, but for a brief moment, its examination of us grew more intense. Then, as if tiring of the
game, it lowered its arm and turned to leave, the look in its eyes now offering not friendship but
resentment. In seconds it and the light it had brought with it was gone.
        Our calm vanished as quickly as the light, and what was left in its place I would wish on no one: emptiness, vulnerability, despair. Unlike before, we had to tell one another of this using shaky
voices that had difficulty finding air--the mental bond we'd shared was now an uncertain dream.
Thinking we might have it within us to bring it back, we tried focusing on both the feeling and what
might have brought it on, the hope, the company, however odd that company was. But we only
succeeded in making ourselves miserable, more so than before the creature arrived. It drove me to
think again of the first-aid cabinet and the drugs that might still soften our coming pain.
        At this unlikely moment, I remembered the EPIRB, the emergency radio beacon which, when
activated, pinpoints one's position to passing aircraft. I did not know if these remote Galapagos
islands experienced "passing aircraft," but it was worth a try. After communicating my intent to
Nicole, I filled my lungs as much as the stale air would permit then dove to the locker that
contained the ship's emergency equipment. It took two additional dives, but finally I was able to
locate the EPIRB then free it from the clamp securing it to the bulkhead. Once back in our little
pocket of air, I activated the signal, grabbed the longest line I could find, tied it securely to the unit,
then dove for the cabin entrance and the open sea that lay just beyond. There, after making sure the
beacon was free of the overturned ship, I released the line then prayed it was long enough to reach
the surface.
        The fact of my having done something positive should have given me a moment of peace, but
instead I began to doubt the value of the beacon. Even if someone did detect it, it was unlikely that
this someone would reach us in time. In addition, the Galapagos were isolated, deliberately kept so
by a protective scientific world; there was little in the way of sophisticated rescue equipment here.
We needed helicopters or at least a ship that could get to us quickly, a diving ship with scuba gear
and, most important to us, a decompression chamber.
        Nicole and I kept up a patter of mutual encouragement, but there was an increasing desperation to it. Reality was an air pocket of no more than a hundred cubic feet--five hours maybe, with four already gone. When light reappeared in the cabin, we felt a moment of hope even as the rapid onset of calm that followed made it clear that it was not humans coming for us but the species we had met earlier. And this time it brought friends.
        I felt Nicole's relief as she felt mine--we were again of one mind. There were five of them in all, a crowd in this limited space. For a long moment they did nothing more than examine us with their eyes, but when finally they tired of staring, which happened to all five simultaneously, they surprised us with a spontaneous chorus of hissing. It was the sound a cat makes when warning another of its species to keep its distance. Although wary and confused, we watched in silence even as the stir of their combined breaths flowed over us. The demonstration lasted less than a minute, after which, one by one, they turned and vanished through the cabin opening, taking the light and the calm along with them.
        We were even more devastated than before. The cabin seemed darker, the water colder and the hope for survival as low as it could be. Our only solace had turned away, leaving us with the echo of a warning we did not understand. Even as we knew they could do little to save us, still we
wished they had stuck around. We had become addicted to the calm that accompanied them, the
light as well. It would be a great mercy if we could exit our lives feeling as we did in their presence.
        More for something to do than to satisfy a hunger, I again dove to the lockers, this time extricating a jug of water and a waterproof container of crackers. As I surfaced with what I expected would be our last meal, it popped into my mind that the air had improved.
        It should, of course, have been obvious. Had we not been so fearful of the disapproval suggested by the hissing, we would have recognized what was happening--even while immersed in the results, it was still difficult to believe: a sea creature getting a few of his friends together for the purpose of gathering air from the surface--in their lungs yet--and bringing it down to humans?
        But I did not communicate my doubts to Nicole. Instead I began to talk up both the air and the food, adding a protest (to plant the thought that rescue was coming) that the latter had to be
rationed. She chuckled at this, but not because she saw through my feeble efforts. She'd
remembered the ample supply of canned goods, including soda and juices--we had more
sustenance than we had remaining life.
        Her going along with the moment permitted us to delude ourselves that quality of life remained, and we kept this going even after it became obvious that the air had again taken a turn for the worse--when no hissing creatures arrived to make it better, it was easy to convince myself that my earlier doubts had been right. Eventually Nicole fell asleep in my arms, her ability to do so aided by the cold and the paucity of available oxygen. I knew it would not be long before I joined her in this near-comatose state, and to avoid our slipping beneath the water, I went about securing us to whatever makeshift hook I could find--not easy in the dark. When finally I was satisfied, I ran my hands over her lovely face, willed myself to remember it even in my final sleep, then closed my eyes in surrender to whatever might come.
        I awoke to the confusion of an unlikely setting, the hint of distant daylight only adding to this. It took time for my slow-moving brain to work it out, to convince me, not only of where I was, but that I was still a member of the living. Nicole was where I had left her, her arms and chest bound to
outcrops of a floor that was now a ceiling. I shook my head, even while believing it would do no
good--oxygen deprivation is not so easily defeated. But my mind did clear and, encouraged, I
tested the air, finding it not all that bad. The odd smell was still there, but my lungs were not at labor
because of it. I did not wake Nicole but used the time to think about what that meant.
        The proof came with the return of the creatures. As before, there were five of them, and this time they came without the light as if knowing we no longer needed it. I shot a glance at Nicole and,
again linked mentally, momentarily felt the pain that was hers even in sleep. But then the treasured
calm arrived to chase it away--were the creatures doing this deliberately, or was this a by-product
of whatever else they were, perhaps a defense mechanism, one designed to strip predators of their
aggression? I elected to decide that they knew what it did to us, that they knew it alleviated our
pain. In so deciding, I felt a rush of affection toward them.
        What I thought must have shown in my face, for the creatures turned in unison to examine it. I
seized the moment to communicate a thought to them, a thought of the surface and how much a
now-alert Nicole and I would like to see it again, but how ill-prepared our bodies were to suffer a
rapid change in pressure. Their expressions did not vary, but I felt in their mellowing stare that they
had saddened. I mentally repeated the fear of rising to the surface too quickly. I pictured a human
being in the midst of the bends and what it would take to ensure that this did not happen. This time
I could not mistake the air of sadness about them.
        As if to cut me short, they began again the pattern of hissing--I greeted it with a knowing smile and a breath of appreciation. The creatures were indeed bringing air from the surface. They were doing this for us. These primitive beings were involved in us, fighting to keep us alive. The affection I'd felt earlier deepened--I felt this even through the enforced calm--and as the creature did earlier, I raised a hand, confident it would stand by and permit my touch. I stroked its scaly face, first in
curiosity then in fondness. When the others turned to leave, this one stayed, and I realized in this
that it had bonded to me; it had returned my affection. It would stand by Nicole and me until the
end. It would not, as it had done before, withdraw the calm and leave us to our fears.
        I do not know who got the idea first, the shared mind of Nicole and me or the creature. No matter; enough that the creature knew and understood, not only the danger but also the unlikelyhood of success. I turned to Nicole, even as I knew the look on her face would mirror mine. There was shock there, fear as well. But there was also hope.
        I did not allow time for reconsideration. I dove for the lockers, my aim to find a tube long enough and thick enough to do the job. A number of dives later, I found it in the engine room, only four feet long but good enough. I separated it into two pieces, one for Nicole and one for me.
Without the calm bestowed upon us by our reptilian hosts, we could not have braved even the
thought of what must come next. Even with it, a hint of horror broke through, especially considering
that I could find no facemasks--our noses would fill with water and our eyes would be close to
useless. But through our merged minds, we told ourselves that there was horror in staying where
we were, putting all our faith in a beacon that may or may not be signaling its presence to an
airplane that may or may not be passing by. And there was horror in suffocating, which would
surely happen if we did nothing and the patience of our new friends began to wane.
        I passed a section of the hose to Nicole, gave her a physical thumbs-up to match the mental one we had just shared, then put one end of the remaining hose into my mouth-it tasted like old engine room, but that was a problem I could live with. Without waiting to be asked, the creature took the other end of my hose into its mouth, then moved behind me to where it could wrap its lower legs around my chest and its uppers, with those human-like fingers, around the top of my head. The rudiments of our plan now in place, I filled my lungs with air then slid beneath the surface.
        Calm or not, it was not an easy thing to surrender so much trust to a cold and scabrous reptile, for that is how I thought of it at that moment. Although I did not to my knowledge encourage this thought, its presence brought on a shiver of revulsion that I knew the creature sensed. Here it was, trying so hard to save my life, and I was rewarding it with contempt for its physical appearance.  How could I explain? How could I repair the harm I was doing to this sensitive being that deserved better, a being that, although wounded in spirit, was not straying from its task of mercy? Nicole was party to it all, including the revulsion and related guilt, and together we wondered why this had to be, what it was that brought humans to react so poorly when faced with the different and the unusual. If we survived this Galapagos incident, it would long be a topic of discussion between us.
        Necessity brought me back to the task of surviving the next few hours. A horror had begun to
churn in my mind, the horror of being so far beneath the sea and totally dependent on the air being
forced through a small tube from the lungs of a reptilian creature that I and probably no one else on
Earth had ever seen. It put me on the knife edge of panic; one tiny slip and suffocating water would
flood my lungs as it was already flooding my nose, eyes and ears. It helped that the creature
understood; as I fought my emotions, it fought to produce enough calm to counter them.
        With practice I was soon able to manage what was, remarkably, a steady flow of air--no excess to it; just enough to keep me alive. Even so, the two of us, man and biological scuba tank, remained submerged a while longer, this to make certain our success was not a momentary thing. I knew it was not necessary that Nicole follow my lead. Having mentally shared the details of the experiment, she was as ready to go as I.
        We were more than the proverbial odd couple as we exited the cabin then stood on the ocean floor a hundred feet beneath the surface. Two unlikely iguanas each wrapped around a human being and connected snout-to-mouth by a plastic tube-something you see every day. But it was working; we were breathing well and felt only a minimum of stress. Our mood was tentative but positive as we went about filling our pockets with enough stones and debris to keep us from rising too quickly.
        A trickle of water leaked into my mouth and, as one would do with a scuba, I blew into the tube to expel it-spit would be more honest. It worked but it was not appreciated by my scaly friend.  Fortunately it recognized the necessity of what I was doing and permitted it to happen. To insure that such patience would not be strained, I pressed my lips more tightly around the hose to minimize leakage.
        It was incredible to me that I had to work at it to feel the seriousness of the situation. I was but scratching the surface of what should have been abject fear. I even smiled as we took the first baby step toward the surface, a decision that was fully ours and not our hosts--they had nothing to offer with respect to a proper rate of ascent. In truth, I knew only the worst of it, that we were in for hours of, at best, tedium--anything less and bubbles of nitrogen would rip our bodies apart. I even had to guess at how big a jump to take before settling down to the first hour or so of acclimatizing.
        I decided on twenty feet to start, which was not easy to estimate in the absence of a diving mask. I told myself that my body would let me know if that were overly ambitious. But it went well, with our back-pack reptiles doing their part, supplying air and making no untoward moves that would aggravate what they knew was a high degree of uncertainty on our part. Although Nicole and I could never forget they were there, the air coming through the tubes was so steady that we could easily imagine we were employing scuba tanks.
        But that was before the air ran out.
        We should, of course, have been expecting this. But even with our friends communicating a change in the making, we were unprepared for the water that rushed into our air tubes. Though still
mentally connected, we reacted differently, I by freezing in near panic and Nicole by shaking off the
replacement reptile that was attempting to perch itself on her shoulders and diving for the air she
knew would be found just inside the cabin (as if in understanding, the creature followed her down).
While I was trying to decide whether to join her, my replacement iguana demonstrated with a
stream of bubbles that air was again available--I grabbed at it like the drowning man I almost was.
By then the calming agents were regaining control, enough so that Nicole could permit her new air
supply to attach itself to her back then, properly connected, return to where I floated in waiting. I
held off moving to the next level until certain she had suffered no adverse affects from her short
plunge to a greater depth.
        By the time it became necessary to switch again, we were ready. At the creatures' mental nods, we each grabbed a last breath of air, then waited in stillness and in calm as two exhausted reptiles released their grips and two new ones moved to take their places. Still without the pain of concern, we blew the excess water from the tubes (our hosts again permitted this) then resumed breathing.
        By now we were forty feet above the ocean floor, over a third of the way to our goal. Yet we felt nothing that our unskilled minds could interpret as an onset of the bends. I looked toward the
surface, so bright and so tantalizing. And still so far. Without a mask, there was only the promise of
an equatorial sun that I had despaired of seeing again, but it was comforting to watch its rays
undulate through the ever-moving water. It gave me something to do while passing the time
necessary for decompression. Nicole spared herself the effort of lifting her head, but shared my
pleasure just the same.
        Two hours and one jump later, the water was noticeably warmer. And the only negative to our health was a slight ache in our joints, a warning sign perhaps but one we could deal with. I
estimated two more jumps, three at the most. By now we were accustomed to the rotation of
creatures on our backs. They appeared to be as well, although they did demonstrate a growing
agitation as we neared the surface. Passing thoughts of this between us, Nicole and I concluded
that they were probably bottom dwellers, this notwithstanding their obvious need for air. Their
ability to remain submerged for long periods of time could be the reason they had avoided
discovery.
        But then, how did we know they had not been discovered? How did we know they did not so pleasure any chance "discoverer" that it left within him no sense of urgency to report what he had
seen (and felt)? The Galapagos are remote, but there are still people here, some of whom routinely
ignore the prohibition against fishing and hunting. Surely one of them would have had an encounter
by now.
        I sought to determine my feelings on this, specifically, what I would reveal once back in the world. I felt no burning sense of having to keep what I knew to myself, even as I sensed this to be the preference of our rescuers--the one currently feeding me air did not react to this thought, other than to let me know it was not concerned. It had more faith in me than I had in myself.
        As we moved to the next level, which I estimated to be only twenty to thirty feet from the surface, agitation blossomed into action. Unlike before, when the creatures would not move for fear of disturbing our concentration, now their massive heads were in constant motion as if searching for
something they hoped not to see. At the same time we felt a lessening of the calm we had come to
expect in their presence. We wondered with growing alarm what it meant. Although we were now
within reach of the surface, we were not yet capable of arriving there with any hope of a long life. I
shot another glance at the surface, this time feeling Nicole do the same. Together we estimated our
chances should there be no choice but to go for it. Feeling our concern, the creature attempted to
renew his focus on our problem--it did not last.
        Then I saw the reason. The unmistakable form of a ship's bottom moved into view, its slaving
propellers giving notice that it was intending to stop-being so close to our tethered beacon, we
knew this to be the reason. Moments later a huge anchor crashed its way into the sea, in the
process coming within a few feet of us. Our official rescue had arrived.
        It was a safe guess that the boat's occupants had no idea we were suspended thirty feet below them--certainly they were not privy to how this came about. I shot a glance at the creature on Nicole's back and saw that it was quivering in fear, the fear we would have felt had they not been here to ward it off. My mind raced to discover a way to reassure them, or, failing that, to
understand what they would have us do. But it was like calling out to a retreating form; the mental
link between us had strained to the breaking point.
        The scaly limbs circling my head and chest summarily loosened. My host was leaving. No longer one mentally, I had to look to see that the same was true of Nicole. But the flight of our protectors was not to be an irresponsible one. They swam to where they were literally in our faces, then shot us an unambiguous instruction: "Take a deep breath!"
        I did, the deepest I had ever before imposed upon my lungs. I turned to Nicole to see if she were doing the same, receiving a quick nod of her head as an answer. Neither of us needing
encouragement for what came next, we took off for the surface, even while knowing we would be
greeted with pain as we arrived.
        The pleasure at being able to suck in an untainted breath of surface air was enormous. Less
satisfying was the first sign of nitrogen bubbles forming in our blood--we were coming down with
the bends. By the time I saw the disbelieving look on the face of the man tending the anchor, it
could not be denied.
        I knew the problem part of our ascent could not have been more than thirty feet, but the fact of our having been so long at a greater depth made it something that would not go unpunished. But could we survive--we had heard that there was not one hyperbaric chamber in the entire Galapagos? Better question: would our rescuers even try? Or would they think we had come up from a greater depth and thus could not hope to survive (I doubted I could convince them otherwise)?
        In any event, I never got a chance to try. Some untold number of minutes later-my pain-ridden
mind would not permit me to know exactly--I was wearing a diver's mask and an oxygen tube was
being pressed against my mouth by a no-nonsense diver (this time human). Another had hold of my
arm and was dragging me downward. As we passed through thirty feet, I tried to signal that it was
enough, that I had already decompressed to that level, but they saw this as a symptom of my illness
and continued to drag me toward the bottom. I tried again, this time with more vigor, but all I
accomplished was to convince them they were doing the right thing.
        Nicole reached the bottom just ahead of me, and what I could see of her expression proved she was every bit as disbelieving as I. Indeed, so much did we communicate this to one another that it struck us as funny. As if still mentally connected, we broke out laughing, causing, I am sure,
confusion and heightened concern on the part of our rescuers.
        We were doomed to endure the process of decompression all over again. Hours and hours of it.  The only positive was that this time we were working with familiar equipment, including enough of a hastily-donned wetsuit to be comfortable at the chilly depths.
        We were so exhausted by the time we reached the surface that we lost any sense of what took place then. Later we were told that we carried on about a new Galapagos species, iguanas with large brains who were telepathic and could erase the dark and take the edge off human emotions. When our expressions told them we still believed, they responded as one might expect. Although they did wonder at our ability to reach the surface at all, to them we had suffered raptures of the deep and a near-fatal dose of the bends, no more. And so convincing were they of this that we found it at least possible that they were right.
        Regardless, we had no inclination to persist in our claims. We were not scientists, and
notwithstanding enough interest in the Galapagos to have made the long trip, we were not
naturalists. Finally, we had no desire to reward our true rescuers with injury, which is how they
would regard too successful a protest.
        There is one additional reason, although we did not discover it until after we arrived home.  We are still in contact.
        Nicole and I find ourselves sharing thoughts, and not just occasionally. You might argue that
couples long a part of each other's lives often feel that way, but this is different. At such times, along
with knowing what the other is thinking, we realize an onset of calm that is every bit as fortifying as
that passed on during our experience. With regard to our reptilian friends, those hours of intimate
contact piqued their curiosity. They wanted to know more about us and, in pursuit of this, found a
way to speak to us across thousands of miles. Speak to us in their own way, of course, but to
Nicole and me, the pictures they present are so explicit that we get, not only the meaning, but the
individual who presented it.
        In the time that has past since our brush with death, we have influenced the creatures greatly, we know this as surely as we know they exist. What we don't know is in what direction this influence has pointed them. There are things about us they like but, like that inadvertent moment of revulsion while they were trying so hard to save our lives, there are things they do not like. And things they fear.
        These highly secretive creatures have altered their long-held notion of what we are. And of what they are--they are using their enormous brains in a manner they had not thought to use them before. Lately we get the impression that they feel themselves more capable mentally than we. And that they are trying to find a way to prove it.  We would be concerned about this, Nicole and I, if we were not so damnably calm all the time.

Copyright 1999 Noel Carroll