8:30PM: Michael and Alex finished moving the furniture to clear as large an area as possible. Tess was still fuming, but had finally agreed to join in. “This is ridiculous! You think that by all connecting, we can find some kind of breakthrough in human/alien relationships?”

Maria snorted. “You are the only one that doesn’t have a ‘human’ side in any relationship!” Then Michael had to step between her and Tess before they got into another shouting exercise. He looked over at Max with a ‘lets get on with it’ kind of expression, and Max called everyone’s attention to himself.

“All right, we lay down in a circle, heads together and hold hands. Izzy, you get on my left. Alex, next to her, then Tess, Kyle, Michael, Maria and back to me.”

Alex quipped. “Sort of H,A,H,A, huh? You know human, alien….” Isabel groaned and Maria threw a pillow off the couch at him. “Thanks Maria, anybody else need a pillow?”

They got situated in their circle, and held hands. Kyle looked over at Michael when he took his hand. “Nothing personal Mikey boy, but if Max’s parents come home I’m dropping your hand. I feel weird enough as it is.”

Tess, on his other side, was holding his hand so tight, that he realized for the first time, that she was scared. She was laying stiff as a board and staring straight up. “Hey, you’re among friends.” He whispered. “Yeah right.” She answered.

“Just a minute!” Maria said, and jumped up and grabbed her bottle of Cedar oil. This she brought back with her, sniffing deeply, and settled back down again. “Okay, ready.”

Max took a deep breath and began to talk them down into a quiet receptive mood. Slowly he sent around a trickle of connection, feeling each one as they were brought into the circle. As he strengthened it, there came flashes from one member or another; favorite toys, best times, worst fears… There would be few precious secrets among this group by the end of all this.

Michael and Isabel re-enforced Max’s memory of the connection with Liz. The intensity of the feelings, all of them. Liz’s fierce determination to save the group by leaving, her tearing love for Max, and the depth of how he returned that love. The memory of the flashes, from Future Max, the horror, the despair, made all of them shudder clear down to their souls. When the whole memory was over, even Tess was caught up in the deeply emotional climax. Then came the meeting between Max and Liz and the hope and promise that were left when she thrust him out of her dream.

Max kept the connection a couple of moments longer, to let everyone share their feelings. It was important to breach the differences between Tess and the others. To make transparent, the barriers that would come up between them, when all returned to the privacy of their own thoughts.

Maria was openly sobbing. That Michael, her Michael, could die like that, that Liz and Max had something so beautiful, and that Michael felt a true feeling of love towards herself… These were so overpowering that Maria was beyond caring if everyone saw her as a wuss. And the quiet desperation that had been Tess’s life, was so unlike the defiant self-possessed front she put on, that Maria felt an instant big sister-ish need to make her feel at home. Tess had never really had one.

Alex had a renewed respect for what it meant to be Max, Is, Michael and Tess. There were some real bad a**’s out there and his friends were part of the main defense. That Max’s future self was willing to give up so much and ask Liz to… That took guts, more guts than he could ever have. But when he remembered Izzy’s torn and blasted body, such rage filled him, that he could have gotten up and charged the enemy alone. He felt everyone’s reaction to the Liz connection. Even Tess accepted the inevitable, and not resentfully. Maybe a little sadness, but there was something else…