Here’s a quick story opener I wrote a while back. I don’t think I’ve even edited it since writing it..

Bronson built a machine. Well, to be truthful, it was several thousand people working in conjunction with one another. Bids were made and plans were drawn up until there was simply no alternative but to build the machine. It was a gloriously, white, pristine space craft. Not so differerent than the ones you’ve seen around lately –but this was the first.

Bronson came up with the idea. he wanted to find out the total expanse of space. His friends loaned him the money –some knowing full-well he might not return to pay it back — and he built the spacecraft.

December 4th of this year he took off. It was a wild ride through the atmostphere and seemed almost anti-climactic to Bronson when he finally got to space –technically “lower earth orbit”. He made a few passes around the earth, he and his crew, that is. They tested the machinery.

Lights flashed here and there, a display changed as the terrain below did. All seemed well. The ship was of fine construction and would give comfort to the crew for as long as they were gone.

The true purpose of this craft was it’s driving force from day one. Sure, the spaceship had all the bells and whistles any space-phile would want but the addition of one thing made this ship special. The one sole purpose of this ship is to use the largest convergence of telepathics anywhere to guide it toward another planet, hopefully with people like us.

Special hollows in the ship were built to merge the energy of these telepathics into a single strong beam of energy…a feeler of sorts. The feeler would travel out beyond the ship in any direction and begin to search the planets closest. This was tried on Earth in much smaller scale when a Nigerian group of spriitualists made contact with a small enclave of Hippies in the San Fernando Valley. Work began on trying to discover just what it was about this group of spirtualists that made them different. Telepathically, they described in immense detail how the process worked and that their wood and mud hovels seemed to amplify their energy.

Bronson was on the team that went to Nigeria. And, as he’s told time and again, the idea of the spaceship was transferred to him in the form of a picture from one of the natives there. As the proverbial lightbulb went off in Bronson’s eyes, the native smiled at him and looked to the sky.

Now, far from Nigeria, Bronson and the native are standing at the helm of the S.S. Cloudmaker. Their first feeler goes out in less than twenty minutes. Close your eyes, think…and help them out.