   T H I R D W I T N E S S This transcript is from one session that elicited momories of a life in the future-- a future where humanity has left the polluted planet to live in space colonies. This is the second of two parts. We ask that you keep an open mind and remember that these responses were unrehearsed and unexpected. The patient, here identified only as "ep," describes his life and environment in vivid detail. It is this detail that lends credence to his chilling view of what lies ahead for humanity, both on and off the planet. A complete copy of this transcript are available from "AMAZON.COM".
Excerpt from THIRD WITNESS: The Alan Arthur Winston
Hypnotherapy Sessions with Edward Peterson
Copyright 1999 Joseph Robert Cowles. All Rights Reserved. * * *
ep: Knowing that I functioned at a very high level of skill. Knowing that what I did was an integral part of the whole, and that the preciseness and fluidity with which I functioned is what allowed everyone and myself to survive.
aaw: How many children did you finally have?
ep: Five.
aaw: How many grandchildren?
ep: Six.
aaw: How many wives?
ep: None.
aaw: Never got married?
ep: Uhn-uh. Why?
aaw: How many marriage contracts--?
ep: I didn't want to give my books up. (Laughs.) They're my books, dammit.
aaw: (Laughs.) Who gets the books?
ep: I don't know. Who does get the books? I was thinkin' that when you said it. Who gets the books? Somebody. Actually, everything goes to the colony, see, unless somebody inherits directly. So the books will go to the library. My stuff will just be divided up. My kids will come around, the grandkids--it doesn't matter. Hell, I'm gone. What do I care?
aaw: Were all of your children still alive?
ep: Um-hmm.
aaw: All of your grandchildren?
ep: Um-hmm. Some of them went on the voyage.
aaw: Tell me about the voyage.
ep: They sent the voyage to a star.
aaw: To a star?
ep: Alpha Centauri.
aaw: What did they expect to find there?
ep: They have no idea.
aaw: Were they looking for habitable planets?
ep: Looking for as a primary objective--not necessarily, certainly, as an end point. But you figure five generations to get there, so--.
aaw: Kind of--.
ep: Yeah. Six or seven hundred years on the way over. It's just--uh--you gotta go, you gotta go.
aaw: How big was the vessel they went on?
ep: Wasn't a vessel. They went on an asteroid.
aaw: The asteroid itself?
ep: Um-hmm.
aaw: Was it traveling along already heading in that direction?
ep: Oh, no. Uhn-uh. You capture 'em.
aaw: You capture an asteroid? Tell me how you do that.
ep: You take a bunch of sleds and go along it and you get next to it and you put your hooks in and you blow your hole and then you settle in, and you do that all around--probably at least five places, depends on the size.
aaw: What do you mean, you blow your hole?
ep: You blow your hole. You blow a hole.
aaw: With explosives?
ep: Um-hmm.
aaw: What does the hole do?
ep: That's where you put the generators in. You gotta get your water and your methane. That's how you do it. You put your hooks in, you blow your hole, you settle it in, and you start suckin' the hydrogen and the methane out of 'em. That's your fuel.
aaw: So the asteroid becomes the ship?
ep: Um-hmm. Becomes the vehicle.
aaw: Becomes the vehicle. What kind of--? Words are really inadequate here.
ep: Um-hmm.
aaw: What do the people live in during this trip?
ep: They live in the asteroid.
aaw: They dig into the asteroid?
ep: Um-hmm.
aaw: So--can they be on the outside of the asteroid too?
ep: Sure. Just, inside, you're protected better. And there's a lotta room. You can make big rooms. Seal stuff off. Lotta space.
aaw: Is this all from the hole you blow? Or do they excavate--
ep: Oh no. You gotta stay away from the engines and the motors.
aaw: Do they dig into the asteroid?
ep: No, you laz in. Shhhht! You melt. You melt conduits and holes. Seal 'em up. Put silicate on it an' seal 'em off. Otherwise you can get oxygen bleed. You don't want that.
aaw: You mean the oxygen dissipates?
ep: Yeah. Bleeds off. You gotta seal it. Seal--
that's the right word, ain't it?
aaw: That's the right word. What do they do for food?
ep: They take it. And they grow it.
aaw: What kinds of things grow best?
ep: Beans, mostly. Legumes.
aaw: Legumes, huh? Are there grains?
ep: A few. Requires too much sunlight and heat transfer. Legumes can do good in low biotic environments--pH levels can fluctuate pretty high. They give off lots of oxygen for the square meter of leaf. And the conversion rate's high. Also, when you compost the stuff back there's good pH values in it. Legumes fix nitrogen. Most stuff sucks nitrogen, doesn't fix it. My favorite--I like lupine bread.
aaw: Lupine bread? What--? Tell me about that.
ep: Lupines.
aaw: Lupines? Like the flower?
ep: Like flowers.
aaw: Is that a legume?
ep: No, it's not a legume, but we make, uh--wheat don't go. So we use Lupines. Lupines are nitrogen fixers. They suck nitrogen right out of the air and fix it. In nodules. Right on the grow screens.
aaw: The grow screens?
ep: Um-hmm.
aaw: Tell me about those.
ep: Like what?
aaw: What is a grow screen?
ep: It's where we grow things.
aaw: Is it a screen?
ep: Yeah. Like A's. A-frames. An' there's two of them. It's like--A--frame. And there's two sides to each frame. And then you put the pods in, you collapse the frame on each side. And then the rip masses go in the center, and then you have spray and drip systems that shoot the nitrogen and the hydrogen right onto the roots. And it's all trapped. They only use that on the big ships and on the asteroids, 'cause it's temperamental, it's picky. But it doesn't require ground--it doesn't require too much area, it doesn't require soil right away. 'Cause you gotta grow five crops to produce enough soil to start growing more crops. Takes awhile for everything to break down properly, 'cause we can't allow the microorganisms up there like you would down on the world. Or like you would even on the moon. You can have a much freer microorganism environment in certain places, but in really fixed and contained places you have to keep the microorganism growth really controlled and contained. 'Cause you never know, with adaptions and stuff, you never know exactly what's gonna happen. There's always that point zero-zero-six's percent of anomaly. So it's like--it's strains y'know, like virulent strains.
aaw: Are the soils in the asteroids and the moons suitable for growing?
ep: That's a whole bunch o' different questions. On the moon you gotta add stuff, but not too much stuff. Once you get things going you can actually, sort of, mine right in that basic soil and grow stuff. But it's bred for there. It's not quite the same stuff that we use on the L's. And then the stuff on the asteroids is pretty much like the stuff on the L's, but it's, in an odd way it's hardier, but then in another way it's more delicate. It won't tolerate--it'll tolerate a wider band of fluctuation in temperature, but it won't tolerate wide pH fluctuations. And the nutrient has to be consistent. Small nutrient devaluations can really, uh--'cause if you screw up one time you might kill off three or four frames. You don't know. You can't really afford that. Everything has to function pretty smoothly. There's not that much I-factor.
aaw: I factor?
ep: Yeah. 'S my grampa's term. Idiot factor.
aaw: (Laughs.) Okay.
ep: It's like a joke, almost. "Hey, what's the I-factor on that thing?" "Six-point-five, buddy."
aaw: If you hadn't been killed at the age of approximately a hundred-fifty, what would your expected life span be?
ep: I was about there. I probably had another good twenty years in me. Would have been nice to spend out my last little while on the council again. I kinda liked that. But this was better. I did the right thing.
aaw: Yes. What--?
ep: I wish I knew if they'd made it.
aaw: You wish you knew what? If they made it?
ep: Sacrifice is pretty damned silly if you don't know if you made it, you know?
aaw: What would it take for you to go--do you call it your soul, your spirit? What do you call your essence?
ep: My essence? What do--? I just call it me.
aaw: What would it take for you to have your you, your me-ness, go to where you can observe whether or not they made it?
ep: That's--I don't have any idea. That's an interesting question. I don't know.
aaw: Your me is without limitation.
ep: My me is without limitation? You're tellin' me that I could envision it if I wanted to.
aaw: Or teleport to it. Or something. So did they make it?
ep: They made it. They had to make it.
aaw: They had to make it.
ep: I figured everything out really good.
aaw: And where were they going to make it to?
ep: They had to get over under the shadow of the moon.
aaw: And how long did they have to stay there?
ep: They had to be in there seventeen-point-five minutes.
aaw: And how much time did they have to get there?
ep: About three minutes.
aaw: But there was enough time, wasn't there?
ep: They might have taken a little charge right before they hit the shadow, but I think they made it. I'd figured pretty close. Pressure was just perfect. I waited as long as I could--
aaw: Because you didn't want 'em to go out of the shadow at the other side?
ep: Right. They gotta be in the shadow, see. Once they made it to the shadow, somebody could pick 'em up. Plenty of time to pick 'em up. Fifteen, seventeen minutes. Get 'em in the hopper pretty quick. It was a pretty good idea. Know where I got it from?
aaw: Where?
ep: A gun. An old gun. My grampa had an old gun. It was a discharge gun, an [undecipherable]. They used to work like there is a tube, like a shell, and there is a projectile in the top, and a powder charge, with gunpowder, and then they would ignite it, and it would shoot the projectile forward, through the tube, see? And I, so I just, I couldn't think o' how we were gonna pull this off, and then I thought, well, I'll divide it in half, and I'll put the canister out front, and I'll pack everybody in the canister--strapped all in with webbing, cargo webs--cargo webs and pads behind 'em--then I opened the front doors, and we sealed off the middle with visqueen and stuff, 'cause it had to blow open, couldn't be too sealed-- I had them seal me in and then they went and got back in the canister, and then I started uncorkin' the bottles, and I raised the pressure, and then right at the last I took a wrench and knocked the top off the last oxygen bottle and it made a spark and ka-boom! Blew 'em right out of there. Just like Grampa's gun. That's a pretty damn good idea.
aaw: Pretty heroic thing to do.
ep: You kidding? (Laughs.) The hard part was gettin' 'em to get in the canister. Spam in a can, buddy. You don't remember that? Charles Grissom said that. He was one of the first American explorers to die.
aaw: How'd he die?
ep: Grissom and Young. Canaveral. Cockpit fire. Wasn't it Grissom and Young?
aaw: No way to get out?
ep: No way to get out. Nowhere to go. Back then they used to bolt y' in. There was no escape hatches or nothing. I used to study that. They had to fight to get a window.
aaw: Talk about primitive.
ep: They didn't even have control.
aaw: Back in these days--those days to you, people are wondering about extraterrestrial communications. What can you tell me about--?
ep: Ain't found no live ones.
aaw: No live ones yet, huh?
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