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I put my hand in front of my mouth so no one could see me talking. "What do you mean `the awakening'?" I asked. "A time for testing has come to your world. Much will be determined in a very short while. The child will be raised. If he is accepted, your world will experience a sudden maturation. If he is not, all will be lost. "What is a Sentinel?" I asked.

"You are the watcher. You are to watch and record. You see as an adult but you can love and be as a child. You live in both worlds. Only a few like you and the children can be shown the truth. "What truth?" Things were getting heavy. My hallucination was using the "T" word. "Your world is awakening, all life, like..." he looked in my eyes as if he was fishing for a metaphor "...like a butterfly leaving a cocoon. It will be very vulnerable for a while. It is a critical period. If you survive, your world will have..." he searched for the right words again "...will have a new life."

Now I wasn't really listening to this. My mind was desperately trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for this decidely unreasonable situation. The kid looked maybe five years old. He talked like he was sixty... or from another planet. I didn't even want to think about the fact that the other adults couldn't see him. The only explanation I could come up with was that I was either off the deep end or someone had slipped me a hallucinogenic mickey. I had drifted off and was running the various possibilities around in my mind when he interrupted my train of thought.

“Do not indulge yourself in thinking...be with me. You can trust your senses. What you see is what is so. I know this is difficult," he said patiently "but we have little time. I cannot stay with you for long. Your life...your mind...is not suited." Suddenly I was uncontrollably angry. "Helter Skelter" off the Beatles White Album blasted from my subconsious. I turned away from him and stomped over to the other side of the playground. I didn't care who was watching. I was furious. I slammed my fist into the chain link fence so hard I cut my knuckles. I looked at the blood oozing over my fist and decided I had better get out of there. I charged over to Variety.