Chapter 13

The nation was still recovering from September 11 when I took the Washington Metro from the Van Dorn Street Station to the station at Washington National Airport. Security was tight all over Washington, DC. From there, I flew on Northwest Airlines, Flight 5454, to McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. I stood in line at the taxi-stand for an hour and a half waiting for a taxi to take me to my family's home near Sunrise Mountain. I couldn't wait to see my family for Christmas.

It had been a rather strange autumn. Ever since I read the white paper on Project Pathfinder, my life changed overnight. That day the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were attacked, and I went home to my apartment on Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia. I entered the building on 42 Duke Street and left the elevator on the 3rd floor.

I saw beams of sunlight coming out of my apartment door, but I thought to myself, "How can there be beams of sunlight? It's night time, and the door should be closed unless David left it open." I investigated by slowly approaching the beams of sunlight emanating from my apartment doorway.

When I stood in front of the doorway, I saw it. The door was open and at the end of the living room by the balcony was a cross made of out fire surrounded by a Rosary of fire. The 10-foot tall apparition was suspended in the air against the darkness of my apartment.

"Who are you?" I asked the apparition.

"I go by many names," said the apparition in a whispering voice I could hear only in my mind.

"What is your name?"

"To you, my name is Dyos," said the fiery cross surrounded by the fiery Rosary.

"What do you want from me, Dyos?"

"I have a purpose for you."

"Which is?"

"You're a scientist. You'll figure it out."

"Who are you talking to?" said another voice. I turned around, and saw David, my roommate staring at me. By then, Dyos had disappeared, and the apartment had turned back to normal.


At the taxi stand at McCarran Airport, tourists talked excitedly. "Look there's the MGM!" a man said to his girlfriend or wife. My rosary bracelet was in my wheeled red carry-on luggage, still without a woman's wrist to put it around. Yet another year, I returned to Las Vegas, my hometown without a woman to bring home to Mom, Dad, and Helen, my sister. Helen lived in Henderson, Nevada with her husband Tony Martin and their son Jonathan Martin. Every Christmas the family got together to celebrate the holidays.

"When are you going to get married?" Helen said over Christmas dinner.

"Uncle Mike needs a girlfriend first," said Jonathan, eating his pumpkin pie. "Even I have a girlfriend, and I'm only 13 years old."

"That's puppy love, Jonathan," I replied. "It doesn't count. Besides where is Shannon these days?"

"She's vacationing with her relatives in San Diego," Jonathan replied.

"Is there something you want to tell us, Mike?" said my mother in her Filipina accent.

"Yeah, Mike," said my father in his Filipino accent. "You've been acting strangely ever since you came back."

Just then I saw a reflection of a Rosary hanging in the window to the dining room against the darkness of the night. I blinked, and it disappeared.