Brand New  4

     Rinny had an older brother, Shep, who was always trying to interest him in a "more 

constructive life", as he put it at times. Today he was reading about glass bottles that were 

used as containers for all kinds of things way back in the early part of the century, even as 

recently as the 2040s. "Here's one for you Rinny," he said as he handed him a blip of a light 

green-colored soda bottle from around 2020. "Liquid refreshment. Lime flavored carbonated 

water" -  Rinny started to smile - "Jackson's Key Lime Soda". "You got any, looks good?" He 

asked."You probably would drink it too," Shep answered.  They both laughed.

     He said, "play song" and the blip started to play the jingle about Jackson's Key Lime Soda  

and all these funny-looking kids from the 20s are singing and dancing around, having a great 

time drinking their soda. "So what? That's how they were. You want me to be like that I 

guess?      

     "I was just showing you the bottle Rinny." "Glass bottles and carbonated water, Bad 

enough drinking carbonated water, what a waste to manufacture all that glass though huh?" 

     'It took a while to develop organic materials, so what? Carbonated water fizzed and tickled 

their noses or something. Who cares?" "You think you're so smart, I bet I could sell you glass-

bottled soda today if I felt like it. You'd be telling all your friends to try it too. He 

started to sing the Jackson jingle and they both had a really good laugh. 

     It was May 2073 and it was raining lightly outside their window In eastern Connecticut. 

 

                                             Brand New 3 

      Rinny was out of a job and sorting through the agency lists. They did 

everything but examine your glands and sign you for job training at, "New 

Introductory Free Start to a New Career", which you had to try unless you knew how 

to bypass their programs. What you had to do was query "lost my job data" to get a 

list of job locations and contact numbers and then play it by ear. He found two 

convenient locations and it was easy to guess what their line of work was by their 

titles. "New Rama Personality Specialists" was perfect. He could just about 

smell their hot vulture breath and see the blood trickling down their chins. He was 

one of them. He was home, like a wolf echoing a blood-curdling howl, he 

answered. 

"Rinny Bader, tracking specialist, Lost my job data" They'd find him fast enough. 

"Takes one to know one", he thought quietly and lit a smik. 

     At the same time that Rinny was click clacking away, looking for a job, a parallel 

search engine, launched over 90 years ago, refired its generators and broadcast a

a message which anyone with half a mind could understand as "is there anyone 

else out there that can read this message?" This came from the RCA camera that 

NASA left on the Moon to record the Apollo 17 Lunar Module with Cernan and 

Schmidt aboard as it took off to return to earth.

Brand New 2

 

                                                           Brand New 2

       It hadn't been that long, and Bill reached out again for something that simply seemed missing in his life. He wasn't quite sure, but something definitely seemed to be responding to that very emptiness. He tried his mobile phone again, just to have something respond to his curiosity about the seeming immense changes in his life. 
Was it his age, his relatively remote location, his unorthodox training in philosophy, the changing world? Something else entirely?

     Are we being invaded, is humanity under attack currently by people on this earth, are we reacting to the heavy shock of world wars I and II? I'll tell you this: "I'm not the only one venturing into these depths to find answers to the radical changes that have occurred in just my own lifetime. It's all of the above, and probably more as well. 

     We have been reaching, most of my life "out there" into near space and more distant space as well,  not only with our imaginations and words, but really, and this is new. We've bumped into something in our actual travels, and it's not just our own science fiction, It's real other cultures, real other thought, real other people. We've reached with our probes the targets we were interested in. It's time we recognized this. You know, you throw a bottle overboard, at sea, with a note in it. Someone just might find it, and, with enough skill, might even reply.