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Chapter 8
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"THE AIR CAR" Chapter VIII Edgar Cayce Reading I guess that I sobbed myself to sleep like a child, lying with my face downward and buried in the crook of one arm. It must have been several hours later when I was awakened by the voice of Dr. Karoll's daughter speaking my name softly. "David...David...Are you awake?" I rolled over. Someone had placed a blanket over me to prevent my taking a chill. I looked around and felt the strange sensation of not recognizing my surroundings. For a moment I wondered where I was and sat up rather suddenly. "Everything's all right, David. Please don't be distressed. All of the people you knew so well and who meant so much to you are truly not lost and gone. You will see." I didn't understand what she was referring to. The grief of a few hours was completely out of my mind for the moment and I smiled at Alice. "Father sent me in to cheer you up. He says that you ought not to think about the past until you have learned more about your present circumstances. When you understand some of the wonderful improvements in our society, you will see why you need not be despondent over the seemingly tragic events of the past." "Your father expects too much of me, I think." I was beginning to remember the conversation with Dr. Karoll. The nap had helped to soften the shock. Still, I could not shake the feeling that I was having some strange kind of dream. "How can I be unemotional about losing every human acquaintance that I ever knew, even if you say the loss took place a hundred years ago?" "David, perhaps you would like to shower and rest. And after dinner I would like to take you for an evening ride in father's air car." Alice motioned toward some clothing that had been set out for me for such an occasion. "It's a beautiful evening to see the sunset from an air car." I felt that the warmth and friendliness Alice expressed toward me were genuine and it flattered me, in spite of my keen sense of dejection. If I looked pathetic because of my state of mind, Alice showed no sign of noticing it. "Yes, yes, I think I would like that...what's an air car?" Alice couldn't resist smiling. My answer was like that of an injured child being offered some kind of surprise dessert if it would stop crying. She said, "Wait and see!" The evening meal was excellent, but I took very little food because the family ate so sparingly and I felt obliged to imitate their ways to keep from appearing ill mannered. They ate in silence and, as with each previous meal, it was almost like participating in a religious ceremony. I noticed that everyone in the household had perfect teeth and they masticated their food with care. Anyone familiar with the literature of health faddists would know something of the way it was prepared. Their plainest and commonest of vegetables had superior flavor and required no seasonings, and, for the most part, were eaten uncooked or the freshly extracted raw juice was taken. I was beginning to learn to appreciate each for its own unique qualities. For example, I found that the flavor of fresh carrots was so delicate and satisfying that I realized I had never before eaten a truly good carrot. They had always been a tasteless vegetable to me when eaten raw and only palatable with plenty of dressing and chopped raisins. When the meal was over Dr. Karoll walked with Alice and myself to a low mound shaped rise in the ground with shrubs and flowers growing upon it. It was located about fifty feet from the house and the entire area around it was landscaped. This was apparently a partly submerged enclosure housing the air car. When we came closer, I noticed that one end of the mound had bi-parting doors and, in a moment, when the doors were rolled back, I found myself viewing a craft which would have delighted a science fiction writer. It had the contour of a stubby cigar with needle points smoothly drawn out from each end. The length of the main body was about twenty-five feet and the diameter was six and one-half feet. The craft had four telescoping supports which were retracted and it floated a few inches above the ground as Alice maneuvered it up out of its chamber. Dr. Karoll took no notice of my astonishment at the air care. Putting his hand on my shoulder, he said, "Alice will thoroughly enjoy showing you some of the beautiful sights that can be observed from this little craft. And you couldn't be in safer hands with her at the controls." As I looked at the strange ship with no wings or visible means of propulsion, then at the controls and the control panel with its various indicators, I began to wonder what I had let myself in for, and I wasn't sure I wanted to ride in such a craft. Both Dr. Karoll and Alice seemed to catch my thoughts and they could not restrain themselves from laughing at my apprehension. "Oh, David, flying is so different today than it was in your time! Your scientists were just beginning to wonder if their theories about gravity were correct. The errors in their theories were found and now flying is as safe as walking...you will see in a moment why this is so." The understanding smile that Alice gave me as she spoke left me no further compunctions about entering the craft. There was comfortable seating for six people and superior equivalents to the kind of conveniences one would expect in the finest of the motorized family travel units that I was familiar with. With a few deft movements, Alice put the machinery into operation that made the door close behind me and caused the craft to gently rise a few feet farther above the ground. The only sound I could hear was an almost unnoticeable vibration, such as fine record player might give out when no music was being played. It was more like sensing electronic equipment in operation than hearing mechanical equipment with moving parts. Alice waved to her father through the crystal clear vision panel before she turned to give her full attention to the controls. After a few more adjustments of the knobs on the control pedestal before her, Alice turned toward me. Pointing to a vertical wheel which reminded me of a ship's steering wheel, except that it was turned sideways, she said, "This is the only control that is operated by a direct mechanical linkage. You see, this is the control that adjusts the balance of the forces of gravity and levitation that act upon the craft. The principle is parallel to the operation of an undersea craft which uses air chambers to balance the weight of the submarine with the surrounding water, except that we are working with ether. This craft has a tank that allows us to use the true vacuum, that is, a vacuum of ether as well as air, to overcome gravity in a manner precisely parallel to that of the submarine's air chambers." My own familiarity with aircraft and the technology associated with flight made me keenly interested in anything that Alice could tell me of the principles behind this craft. She said the key to this method to control gravity lay in the discovery of how to create a metal from helium which was dense enough to contain, or rather to exclude, ether through which gravity operated. As Alice turned the wheel she had just referred to, we began to rise vertically...slowly at first but with a gradually more noticeable acceleration which I could sense by the increased downward pressure of my body in the seat. The craft retained its horizontal orientation so that it was as though we were comfortably seated in an elevator making a vertical ascent. The evening sky was red and a beautiful sunset spread before us in ever vaster proportions as we rose higher and higher. When Alice brought the craft to a standstill, the upper surface of the clouds was far below. It extended in all directions like a great pink and white sea with an occasional dark mountain top island projecting above its surface in the distance. The motionless craft was without vibration, for Alice had turned off whatever mechanism had produced the electronic hum I had sensed on the way up. The wonder of such vastness and beauty absorbed me so completely that I became unconscious of everything else. For perhaps ten minutes or more I sat entranced. Without any conscious effort to pull my thoughts away from the personal upheaval within, my mind had turned to contemplation of eternal values. There seemed to be a quieting influence upon my spirit flowing into me from the silent beauty of the sunset. A peaceful and relaxed calm gradually filled my whole being like water pouring into a jug until it overflowed. Along with this came a reverence for the Creator, a deeper reverence than I had ever known. I half imagined that some kind of mental communication was taking place above the level of consciousness between Alice and myself and this was working in me to influence my feelings. Almost without thinking I found myself saying, "Alice, tell me about your belief in God." She turned to me with a look of tender understanding and joy so that I almost thought I saw a halo begin to glow around her head. "Oh, David, I'm so glad that you should ask me that question. You lived in a time when people so needed to believe and have faith in God. And though there was much that seemed tragic and hopeless in those times, still we are amazed and wonder now that just observing nature wasn't enough to make people very conscious of their Creator. Of course, history makes it clear that this was not so." "It's easy to agree that observing the earth from an air car ought to make anyone a believer," I said with awe. "The earth was so very lovely when you were born into it, David. Many of its beauties and wonders in your time are gone forever; many species of life are extinct; even many forms of plant life will never be seen again." "Hmmmm!" I mused thoughtfully, "There was a lot of speculation that we were on the verge of making ourselves and all life on earth extinct." Alice was quiet for a moment and I could see that her feelings of sympathy were deeply stirred. "Oh," she said, "nothing was more painful to me during my early school days than to learn of the horror of the great wars, of how humans in your time devoted their best talents to destroying each other, to poisoning and crushing the life in nature at a time when earth was so exquisitely lovely and there was such abundance." "Well," I said, beginning to feel a little defensive, "I guess we felt pretty much the same way about the treatment our ancestors of a hundred years before gave the Indians and what they did to the great forests and herds of wild animals and birds of America." "But, David, that seemed different because then most people were uneducated. The leaders of the nation did not have the means to communicate with the masses and guide them. But history about your own time tells how the people of highly educated and technically developed nations had so little faith in the teachings of their Holy Scriptures that they could actually enjoy the pleasures of their prosperity while the greater majority of the earth's population suffered miserably in poverty and ignorance and fear. Even in America there was untold misery among the poorer classes. Children were brought into the world to experience the ugliness and uncleanness of crowded cities, so that their tender spirits became warped and stunted." "Why, Alice, I can see that our normal way of life looks to you like a painful tragedy. Can things be so different now?" "Oh, yes, they are different, altogether different. We do wonder how knowledgeable people could live with themselves in your day." "Well now, poverty and ignorance have been part of human society throughout all history. Hardly anyone imagined that this could really be changed. Why, the more the government tried to give help to the underprivileged classes, the worse things seemed to get. As welfare programs were expanded, the riots and crimes increased. Besides, Alice, there has never been much connection between social conditions and belief in God. All through history we have had the rich and the poor...and churches for them both." "Oh, surely you are speaking out of character. Were you also unfeeling like so many of your day...did you not agonize over the injustice, the inhuman wars, the poverty, disease and hopelessness of the under-privileged peoples of the earth?" "Well, to tell you the truth, I did. I suppose that my willingness to risk my life with an experiment in suspended animation was partly the result of my frustration with our society and its calloused attitude toward worldwide social injustice." "It must have been very difficult for anyone who saw it that way to live then," Alice said with tenderness. "I did feel that things were terribly wrong when the government of a great nation like America seemed helpless to put its own Constitution into practice. It could not create order and peace even in its capitol city, much less throughout the land. Why, it seemed that the good people stood by and watched while the commercial interests were causing ghastly pollution of every body of pure water in the land. The land itself was being contaminated with insecticides, the atmosphere with industrial fumes, and the precious tidal swamps rendered sterile by poisonous wastes. The nation had billions of dollars to spend on munitions and space flights, but was not able to build adequate sewage treatment facilities or control air pollution or build suitable school facilities or plan recreation areas for the city people, much less clear the slums and build suitable residential districts. It was like living in a gigantic insane asylum. At a time when the National Budget allowed twenty-five cents per person for library materials to serve the needs of rural communities, the nation was spending several thousand dollars per person for ammunition being used to destroy a small Asiatic country of illiterates. Driven by the lust for power and wealth, individuals and corporations showed inhuman disregard for their fellowman, for posterity or for their natural environment. Through all this, the ministers preached on and eagerly cultivated the favor of their wealthiest church members and staunchly defended the Christian virtue of the youths who patriotically defended Democracy by murdering primitive Asiatics ten thousand miles away." "David, I didn't mean to bring our conversation to such a turn when you asked about my belief in God. You do share my feelings about your times. To have lived in them must be different than I can imagine for I simply do not see how people stood it." "Yes," was all that I could answer for the moment. The thoughts of earth being so polluted and exploited were still very much before me and my new circumstances could hardly change my mental set from the accumulation of years of exposure to such times. All the grandeur of the fading sunset was lost to me as I thought about the world conditions I knew. "I'm sorry, David," Alice said simply. We descended just as we had risen. I took note of the instrument panel while we were returning. There were lighted navigation screens which showed the location of our ship and also any other craft in the vicinity. The electronic screen indicated our position with regard to altitude, latitude and longitude, and the direction in which the craft was moving. It was apparent that the ship could be guided to any point on the globe with ease and safety from the information plainly showing on the glowing screens before us. Alice noticed my interest in the panel and answered a question arising in my mind before I spoke. I was wondering about the fuel requirements for a long flight. She informed me that the craft required no fuel, but received energy that was broadcast from various points on the globe. It was always tuned in to the power supply stations in a manner parallel to a radio receiver being tuned in to a transmitter wave length. After the rediscovery of the power source of ancient Atlantis, the world had available the limitless and ever present energy from cosmic rays which were converted into a useful form by gigantic crystals. She said that the cosmic energy conversion process was similar in principle to the way high voltage electricity is reduced to low voltage by means of a transformer coil. We were back in Dr. Karoll's home in a few moments. The family noticed that I looked excited and nervous and suggested that I needed a rest. I retired early for a long and refreshing rest and had pleasant dreams which I couldn't remember very distinctly but seemed, nevertheless, to give me a deeper understanding of the events I was experiencing. |