personal experiences with the 'Others'

"This is the novel for which thousands of 'Star People' all over the world have been waiting -- only they will know from their personal experiences with the 'Others' that Lauren Zimmerman's provocative work is fact, not fiction!"
Brad Steiger, author of 'Starborn' and 'UFO Odyssey'


"This is a very important piece of work, coming as it does during a time of great change in our world and our acceleration towards the heavens of other worlds. Many of us have not overlooked the significance of events occurring on Earth itself, which includes the thousands of UFO reports from all parts of the globe. We have had to wait until now for the first cracks to appear in our government's secrecy surrounding the subject. As we move into the 21st century, the French and British governments admit that there are objects in our skies suggesting something or someone has 'Called".
"

As I read through this book, it became apparent that there was such resonance to the story that it did more than cement the story into place but registered an eerie kind of message to us.


Current scientific findings and technological advances bring us to a place where we should be thinking constructively about our wider future in the universe. Visions cast today will undoubtedly become reality sometime in our tomorrows. CALLED is a book to be enjoyed, but it shouldn't be taken too lightly either. ..

A great read, this book will deeply touch people who have had unexplained experiences and who continue to suffer in silence, rather than chance rejection by friends and colleagues. All thinking people will feel the timing of the material. CALLED did not arrive on our bookshelves a day too soon.
"
Colin Andrews, author of "Circular Evidence"
and President of Circles Phenomenon Research International

+++++

CALLED
BY LAUREN ZIMMERMAN
(FIRST CHAPTER)


THE DREAM IS SURREAL. The massive craft stretches across the night sky. The empty control room, dimly lit by an unidentified light source, is immersed in unearthly silence. Large black chairs sit solidly in front of a control panel. Small phosphorescent lights blink occasionally. Beyond the expanse of windows above the control panel, the Universe waits silently. Shadows of other-world beings can be sensed moving around behind him. But Paul can't see them. He feels locked in position, his attention captured by the sight of Planet Earth, the size of a pea from the view he has of it. It floats soundlessly in the vast expanse of space and time.


Suddenly a hand touches his shoulder. He turns his head cautiously to look. The hand has only three fingers. He shifts his focus, moving his gaze until he's looking into the solemn, almond-shaped eyes of a small being with ivory skin. An unexplainable rush of peace fills him as memories that he's shared with this being attempt to struggle to the surface of his mind. A flash of light as bright as a sunray burns itself into his brain. Instantly another place and time dominates the dream, sliding him, as dreams often do, into another world.


He's in a nebulous world full of memories of another life in another time. A loving face, raven-black hair wrapped around his arms and drifting across his chest like clinging seaweed, a love so deep that his soul aches for it. He feels himself sliding away from her the instant he recognizes her. He reaches to hold her, but in vain.


The dream slides away, taking her with it. Suddenly fully awake, filled with bewilderment and conflicting emotions, Paul shook his head. With a dullness born of burdened emotion, he sat up, leaned back against the headboard, and pulled his knees up against his chest. Wrapping his arms around his knees, he accepted, for the hundredth time, that the dreams weren't going away and that somehow he had to find a way to balance his two worlds ... the dream world and the world that made up his days. He knew instinctively that he would never be the same as other people.


He'd known it all his life, struggled with it daily, and now was doing his best to accept it totally. The dream world felt too real to be fiction. It had been haunting him since he was four years old. But now, at twenty-nine, his emotions had grown too raw for the imbalance of the two worlds, the two realities, to be ignored or played off as just something to be endured. He liked to think that he wasn't afraid of anything but this morning he could feel an unnamed fear stirring up his stomach. He decided to skip his morning coffee for the moment and instead settled into mulling over the dreams of the night.
Dominating his thoughts was the memory of a triangular face with large black eyes, the touch of a cool hand, the hint of a mystery far beyond his present understanding. The dream echoed through his mind, trying to find a place to make itself real.


He identified a fear deep within himself as he gained full recall of the first part of the dream. Accepting the dream as fact, and knowing that he had been in another place, aboard a spacecraft that apparently hovered somewhere above Earth, wasn't the source of his fear. He probed his discomfort like a sore tooth. His body ached as if he had the flu. A dull pain stood behind his eyes. All of this was familiar to him … including the dream.
It wasn't the unknown that was bothering him. It was what to do about accepting that it was real and that there was a good possibility that something was being asked of him, something he hadn't yet identified. The dreams had been romancing him most of his life, tempting him to remember and accept.


Other worlds, other realities, other universes. Each dream was a nebulous seductress, enticing him to believe in something other than the reality that he was living. The thrill of possibility danced through his spine every time he allowed himself to believe that there was something more, something beyond what everyone accepted as reality.


No. He wasn't afraid of encountering other worlds and other-world beings. His fear was that now it was time to do something about what he instinctively knew was the truth. The time had come for him to face the challenge of admitting to the world that he was different. But the first thing he had to do was deal with his own acceptance and understanding.


He readjusted his position, rested his head against the backboard, and stretched his legs out in front of him. The dreams were confirmation of what he had always felt about himself. He was from elsewhere. All of his discomfort, uneasiness, and boredom with life would make sense if it were true that he was from another time and place. What remained for him to do was to decide what he was going to do about it if he could talk himself into fully accepting it.


Thoughts and questions flew through his mind. Would his life have been different if he had always been aware of his origins? Would he have been able to stop his father's drinking, his mother's abuse and martyrdom, his brother's rush to fate and death as he escaped into drugs to avoid his pain? Realistically, he knew that he could not have changed the people but perhaps he could have changed his own reaction to his experience.
And by changing his own reaction, changing how he interacted with the members of his family, could things have turned out differently?

As for his own life … would he have leapt from one woman to the next, seeking that certain someone that he could sense but could not put a face to? Would he have spent his life searching?

Would he have taken so much time and made such an effort to fit in, to attempt to be something that he could never be?

He had always been athletic and lean. He worked out at the school gymnasium after hours at least three times a week. At 6'1", he weighed 192 and was good-looking enough to be called handsome by the ladies that he'd dated. He thought of himself as an efficient but lackadaisical basketball coach. He'd worked at the high school since his own graduation, walking the few blocks to work every day. He still lived in the city where he'd been born and raised.
He drove a beat-up, old Bronco and, on occasion, tossed a few clothes and some food in the back of it and headed into the nearby foothills on a weekend quest for peace and quiet.


Paul shook his head, realizing that his introspection was serving no purpose. He wasn't getting any closer to figuring out how he was going to begin living his personal truth … that he was an alien in a human body. He threw off the covers and headed for the shower. Later, shirtless and barefoot, he paced the length of his apartment. While he'd been showering, one particular memory had become clearer. He was in the past and in the present at the same time.
Watching himself from a distance, he studied the memory as though it belonged to someone else.


There were five small beings guiding him through the atmosphere of Earth. They ranged between three and four feet tall and had smooth, ivory-colored skin covering their small, thin frames. Their heads were large in proportion to their bodies. Their great, almond-shaped ebony eyes were made even darker by the compassion that poured through them.


Paul was in spirit form, drifting through the atmosphere without effort, flanked by his comrades. The light that was cast by his spirit touched the forms of his five friends, giving them a slightly haunted appearance. Beneath them, the roof of the house where he was going to live loomed black and, to Paul, ominous. Though he had volunteered for this mission, he was not happy about it.


He and his companions merged their cells with the cells of the roof and ceiling and moved easily through the apparent solidity. They were now looming above the sleeping form of a small, four-year-old child.


"Learn what you can," Zere said, extending his small, three-fingered hand toward Paul's spirit in a hesitant way, wanting to comfort but knowing that the actuality of Paul's mission was too great to be comforted by a mere touch. Paul nodded and turned toward the body of the sleeping child. Immediately, a small light emerged from the child's body. After emerging, it grew in stature until the full light of a tall spirit stood before them.


Paul nodded in acknowledgment. "Thank you for holding the focus for me." The energy of his thought passed to the one who would be leaving. The tall spirit nodded in return and extended its light to embrace Paul. "I wish you all the best," his thoughts whispered. "I know this won't be easy for you.
"

A deep sense of dread rushed through Paul. It had been a common emotion since the Council had accepted his decision to incarnate on Earth. Now that the moment of incarnation had arrived, a sense of hesitation and misgiving gripped him. As if all of them were sharing the same thought, everyone exchanged solemn glances. All eyes turned toward Paul. After only a second of hesitation, he nodded slowly. The others resumed their work.
Paul watched without speaking as Zere and the others busied themselves with disconnecting the departing spirit and attaching his to the small body that lay still on the bed beneath them. When the operation was complete, Paul watched as the freed spirit soared eagerly through the ceiling and away. Paul turned to his five companions with a sorrow unmatched. Their eyes reflected his pain.


"We'll be with you," Zere said quietly.


Unable to speak, Paul nodded once again. He scanned the eyes of each of those who were so dear to him. There was nothing more to be said. His decision had been discussed and debated for several months. All of the details had been hashed through, all possible issues that might arise had been addressed and solutions hammered out until, finally, everyone was satisfied that they had done the best they could to prepare for this mission.


But now that the moment of separation was upon him, Paul could think of thousands of things that could go wrong. And his family would be millions of miles away. He choked back a sudden wave of longing and lifted his eyes to meet theirs. "I will be back with you soon," he said stoutly.


Each of them nodded eagerly. No one, including himself, believed his words at all. His life on Earth would take up nearly eighty Earth years. It would take that long to complete the work that he had assigned himself.


One by one he embraced them. He watched solemnly as they merged with the ceiling and disappeared from sight. He was alone in a darkened room with a small, foreign body that was going to be his home for the next eighty years. Beyond the door of the bedroom slept the strangers that would serve as his parents.
Outside the walls of the small house sat a foreign world, a world
filled with people who would challenge him in ways that would take all of his strength to master and understand. The very thought of it took every ounce of resolution from his spirit. Exhausted, he allowed the light of his spirit to merge with the darkness of the small body and wearily closed his mind to the future. The cord that now attached his spirit to the body lay across him like an abandoned umbilical cord, dull and unwanted.


The phone beside him rang softly, startling him out of his memory. Unnerved by the sudden call to reality, he scrubbed his long fingers through his sandy-colored hair and picked up the receiver.


"Happy summer vacation," Sandi chirped, her pert voice grounding him firmly into the day.


"Thanks. Same to you." He realized that he sounded dull but he didn't have the energy to do anything about it.


"What do you have planned for the first day of your vacation?" she asked.


Paul frowned at the phone, feeling trapped by the sudden necessity to make plans. He knew that she was falling in love with him. He'd been aware of it for weeks. But she wasn't the woman in his dream, the woman who seemed to be insisting that he search for her. It was time to tell Sandi that he didn't feel the same as she did. It wasn't fair for her to continue to believe otherwise. "I haven't really thought about what I'm going to do," he said. "I wanted to give myself some time." He cleared his throat nervously, thinking about his next words.


Sandi's voice became hesitant. "Oh. Sure. I can understand that.
"

Paul could feel her back off, like she always did, ever anxious to please him. He felt compassion for her flow through him. He saw her as vulnerable and somehow defenseless in a world that was too large for her, too complicated. He wanted to protect her because she was his friend. But for the first time he accepted that he needed to put his own needs before hers.


"Did I wake you?" she asked. "You sound distracted.
"

Paul shook his head. "No. But I need to tell you something." He hurried .. she could interrupt. "You're a wonderful person and I wish I could be the right man for you. But I'm not.
"

He heard her draw her breath in quickly but he didn't stop. It needed to be said. "You're going to find the right one, Sandi." A rush of intuition and vision flooded him. He suddenly knew who the man was. He saw, in his mind's eye, the two of them standing before a minister, exchanging vows. He chose to believe in his vision and hurried his words in order to give her the hope she needed. "You already know him, Sandi. You just haven't opened your eyes to him yet. Think about it. Open your heart to accept him and he'll be there.
"

Paul closed his eyes briefly, feeling his own sense of loss as he let her go. "You'll be very happy," he said quietly.


"Paul?" Sandi said hesitantly.
"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Sandi. And you will be too.
"

"I don't understand you," she told him softly.


"I know," he whispered. He sighed deeply as she gently set the phone down.