This Story Project is like working on a jigsaw puzzle. Now we have a little more than half of the outside edge of the puzzle, and finished sections of the interior, and we keep filling in more and more all the time.
Nothing has ever brought me more peace, and more joy. I know I am doing what I came here to do. I know for certain what my career is, the one that was destined to replace truck driving. I have never been more at peace with myself.
It’s curious how you can be so excited and thrilled and jazzed, and so at peace, at the same time. This story is going to change the world. It feels like a world-class project, like Star Trek or Star Wars. While on the job, I am constantly listening to soundtracks from science fiction movies. I am constantly comparing my science fiction universe to other ones. Walt Disney is also a point of comparison, because a hub-and-spoke Magic Kingdom, starting on “Main Street” and then radiating out into those other worlds like Fantasyland and Tomorrowland and Adventureland, provides clarification for my project.
Seeing a movie, reading a book, is like taking a trip. It’s like a fun excursion into the imagination, like a visit to Disneyland: your trip begins on “Main Street” and then branches out from there. Having the excursion begin from a secure, comfortable, familiar reference point is something I insist on providing. In The Last Starfighter, the story begins in a mobile home park somewhere on the California coast, perhaps San Luis Obispo. Security, stability, a sense of familiarity and belonging. Galaxy Quest starts in the real world, too, a sci-fi convention from the 1990s. E.T., Steven Spielberg’s movie, is set mostly in suburban L.A. County. I looked it up, because I always thought that Eliot’s family’s home must be in Porter Ranch, and I was right. It’s a secure, real-world, comforting environment.
Star Wars does not kick off in the real world. Neither does Star Trek. I want anyone in the world reading or watching this story to feel safe and secure, like they’re at home, so I am providing a secure familiar real-world setting, a fictional university in the Bay Area but nevertheless a place that could easily be on Planet Earth. The characters will be shown in houses where they live, and then as temporary residents of a college dorm during the summer break. All the characters are from here. No extraterrestrials or space beings, like Men in Black and E.T. No trips to outer space, like Galaxy Quest. Not on Mars, like Total Recall; not on the Moon, like Adventures of Pluto Nash.
[You could argue otherwise: readers might take issue with my assessment of Star Trek, but James Kirk’s futuristic home of Riverside, Iowa, does not look like the world of today. Nor does the base of the Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. This fictional 22nd-24th Century world looks more like the strange setting of the movie Tomorrowland than a place we would find familiar. ]
But don’t let that apparent restriction fool you. This is no ordinary story. It’s more like Back To The Future in that sense, taking the real world and just viewing it in a fun new way.
But if that’s all it was, light entertainment and fun escapism like each of those movies just mentioned, it wouldn’t carry this level of excitement. What makes this the hottest thing on the planet is this:
My story project is probably the deepest and most profound "science fiction” world in existence. In my mind, I am not writing fiction. In my mind, I have spent my adult life probing the reality of how life actually works, and some of that reality looks like science fiction to our conventional society. Sure, the story and the characters are made up, but the structures inside the story are real. To me they’re real. There really is a fraternity and society of Titans, of Great Souls, who have gone before and who have special abilities. We really are Titans in human form, Gods and Goddesses who are appearing in this world as projections of consciousness from another place, a place in which we are masters ourselves. Everyone in the world is a Titan, a Master Being, a Super-Human, a Great Soul, from another dimension, who is here to develop, to advance, to evolve, to bring unique skills and talents, as we go through the process of developing into super-humans and titans in this world as well.
Who knows, maybe some day someone will argue with me that humans are not master beings in disguise, that we are not super-humans in training, that we are not great souls from elsewhere who are developing into master beings in this world as well.
My response will be simple: remember The Jetsons? The characters in the show wore technology on their wrists that allowed them to communicate with each other. It’s like FaceTime using an Apple watch. That technology exists now. Back in the 1960s, it was just a wild figment of imagination.
With this story project, like in The Jetsons, we are inventing the future. Of course, you can invent the future, like for example the future of society, by producing a sit-com or a TV series. My wife Julia was impacted by The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which offered a new model of an independent, free and happy woman. That’s one example of many.
But here, in this story project, we are saying that the abilities and skills of the human being are limitless. Some of us have the potential to walk on water, like Joshua did. Some of us will be able to appear and disappear at will, or project ourselves to other locations to meet other people, like Joshua did after his transfiguration and like many other master beings have done and still can do, like Carlos Castaneda’s mentors Don Juan and Don Genaro.
Again, I think it’s the hottest thing on the planet.
So our story project has links to Star Trek (the diverse characters and the teamwork, an ideal society) and superhumans (Superman, Batman, et al) and magical tales (Back To The Future, Time Bandits) and great souls and heroes who inspired world religions or even just select audiences (Castaneda’s readers, for example).
Life: a Field Manual is actually Life: A Field Manual for Titans and Great Souls in training, or perhaps A Field Manual for Gods and Goddesses in Human Form. As a society, we only need to rethink our conception of what being a human is.
The human characters have been chosen to represent humanity, all of human civilization, the diversity of types of people, so that every person who sees the movie or reads the book can find a character to identify with. Most of the characters are women, because the future society we want to help invent requires it. Nehanda is from Africa. Africa as a society needs to get beyond male domination. So does Asia, hence the character Jade is a woman, so does Muslim Asia, hence Saditha. The American characters are Sheryl from upstate New York, who is perfect for her part, and Carlos from L.A., and Tom my military person.
So far there is also one superhuman character in the story, but she is going to remain a surprise, so no spoilers here.