The kitchen itself was of little consequence, brightly painted with yellows and whites. Though it had all the common tools, it was barely large enough to hold the small dining table tucked just off into the back corner away from the gas stove.

The table was set and the plates already held a sparse meal consisting of a portion of fideo and two beef tacos each. Gilbert took the chair facing away from the kitchen, but closer to it, within easy access to any, as needed, extras. This left me the view of the kitchen as a whole, my back to a solid wall, and on my left a large picture window view out into the man-made jungle below, which was now in near complete darkness.

For those of you who don't know what fideo is, let me enlighten you. It's not much of anything, unless you were raised on it as I was. It is quite simply browned vermicelli pasta with Comino, garlic, onions, celery, stewed tomatoes, salt and pepper. There's no great significance to this meal selection other than Gilbert's obvious attempt to put me at ease. We ate the light meal and chatted for about an hour over what we had been doing since graduation. During the discussion, Gilbert got up to put a pot of tea on the stove while clearing the plates. When the pot began to whistle, he turned off the heat and let it set while we finished our wine.

He brought the pot of tea over to the table on the same tray I had been given to use earlier at the waterfall, only now it had two cups on it. He sat the tray within my reach, grabbed up his chair and moved it closer to where I was sitting. He sat down and poured us both a cup of the brew. It was essentially the same tea I had earlier, except that it seemed to have a slightly higher astringency factor. We both sat in silence enjoying the tea.

After a couple of moments he asked, "How are you feeling? Do you feel up to a rather intense topic of discussion?"

"You know me, brother-o-mine, I ain't never been so messed up I cain't think - reasonably well."

He caught the joke and laughed, but continued, "Carlos, I went to all this trouble to impress upon you the seriousness with which I wish you to consider my proposal."
"I figured that out by myself."

"I knew you would," he stated, while touching my left knee with his right hand, to capture my full attention and disrupt any further interruption. "I believe this is more than just important. I believe we can do something together which will change the very mindscape we live within. And not just for ourselves. What we can do for each other will change the way everyone else will view the universe.

"Don't laugh, I'm serious," he continued. "Here, this will be easier if you experience it the way I did. I want you to watch this one episode of the Montahue show."

"Oh my God, Gilbert, don't tell me you experienced revelation by watching a talk show!"

"Yes Carlos, I did. Stranger things have been known to happen. Please bear with me. You've done so well up to this point. It would seem a shame for you to back out now, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose it would, and quite ungracious of me too."

"Thank you, thank you so very much. (Sometimes I wonder about Gilbert's sense of humor. You never can tell for sure.) "You won't regret it, I promise. In fact this is going to blow your mind, like finding a pearl in swine excrement."

"No kidding." I murmured loud enough for him to hear.

We both laughed at that once he started.

"Come with me." He continued as he stood up. "I have everything all ready." We walked back down the short hall we had used to enter the kitchen and took one of the alternate closed doors to our right. It opened into a small room which had been set up exclusively for the holo-viewer. He motioned me to take a seat while he took the other and picked up the media wand. He dimmed the lights and the following is my written transcript of what we watched: (Slightly amended by myself, for color.)

Proceed to The Unifying Factor part 2

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