Strangers

power. But before I ever had a chance, we were taken into custody."
        "Alive," Bennell said - shocked, fascinated. "Well, the condition of the eight bodies… two were virtually turned to dust… two more were badly decomposed… apparently because their suspended-animation boxes had shut down once they died. Four were in much better condition, and two seemed perfectly preserved. But we never dared imagine…"
        "Yes," Dom said, clearly recalling more. "Just barely alive, but holding on to pass the gift. Of course, I expected to be interrogated, to have a chance to tell what had happened to me in the ship. But the government was so eager to protect society from the shock of contact, and then so afraid of the unknown… I never had the chance to tell."
        "Soon," Bennell said, "we can tell the world."
        "And change the world," Brendan said.
        Ginger looked at the faces of the Tranquility family, at Parker and Bennell, and sensed the bond that would soon exist between all men and women, an incredible closeness that would arise from their sudden shared leap up the evolutionary ladder toward a better world. No more would people be strangers, one to another, not anywhere on earth. All prior human history had been lived in the dark, and now they stood at the gates of a new dawn. She looked at her two small hands, a surgeon's hands, and she thought of the decade-long studies to which she had diligently applied herself with the hope of saving lives. Now, perhaps all that training would be for nothing. She didn't care. She was filled with joy at the prospect of a world that did not need medicine or surgery. Soon, when Dom had passed the gift to her, as she would ask him to, she'd be able to heal with her touch. More important, with only her touch, she would be able to pass unto others the power to heal themselves. The human life-span would increase dramatically overnight - three hundred, four hundred, even five hundred years. Except for accidents, the specter of death would be banished to a distant horizon. No more would the Annas and Jacobs be wrenched away from the children who loved them. No more would husbands have to sit in mourning at the deathbeds of young wives. No more, Baruch ha-Shem, no more.

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    NEW AFTERWORD
        
    BY

    DEAN KOONTZ

        
        I was not fully sane when I wrote Strangers. Some psychologists would argue that a person is either sane or not, that there aren't degrees of sanity. They would say that a person who otherwise acts sane but exhibits a few peculiar or even irrational actions might better be called an eccentric; certain Freudians might prefer the more serious medical term screwball, while Jungian psychologists might insist on twinkle. But when writing Strangers, I wasn't merely an eccentric or a screwball, or a twinkie, or even a Sara Lee pound cake; I was in fact not fully sane.
        Please understand: While not fully sane, neither was I insane. I never took an ax to my neighbor, although on numerous occasions he gave me good reason to dismember him, Cuisinart the pieces, and pour his remains into a Jell-O mold shaped like a jackass. I never bought a creepy old motel, never dressed up as my mother, and never stabbed unsuspecting guests while they showered-or while they brushed their teeth, for that matter. My writing had not at that time found an audience of considerable size; therefore, I didn't possess the financial capital to acquire commercial real estate, creepy or otherwise. I never for a moment thought I was Napoleon-either the former French emperor or the delicious pastry. I never insisted to anyone that the world is flat, although I had my suspicions, and I never stuck a feather in my hat and called il macaroni.
        In the matter of Strangers, the two proofs of my departure from a state of full and sunny sanity are these:
        First, I wrote it on speculation. This means that I wrote it without having a contract, without any assurance that it would sell to a publisher.
        All new writers begin this way, of course, but after selling a book or two, or five, they discover that publishers will trust them enough to give them contracts for novels based on sample chapters and/or outlines, and will pay a portion of the advance on signing of the contract, which gives writers living money while they create works of lasting genius or works to make their dear mothers weep in despair, or possibly both. Some writers budget