Not even when the President of the United States or the Pope speaks do so many pay such rapt, all-consuming attention. Yes, this has developed into a shared human experience, reading the words of a man who knows he’s going to die in two more days. But what makes this so profound is that Kip Dawson is saying things that ring true in the hearts and minds and unspoken memories of so many… his angst, his remorse over things left undone, his grief and joy over relationships that form the basic sinew of life, and even one amazing instance this afternoon in which his recounting of misconduct by the company that employs him has already sparked law enforcement action that may end in indictments and prison sentences. In many things he’s written, Kip Dawson is giving voice to feelings we’ve dared not reveal, and touching us uncomfortably in the process. Worldwide, he’s sparking debates and focusing attention on ideas, some fairly far out—such as the religious debate Kip’s words ignited when he recommended that marriage be limited to eighteen years past the birth of the last child. If you’ve been glued to your TV or computer reading every word… if you’ve called in sick or been inattentive to your duties because you’re wrapped up in this, that’s okay, because you’re witnessing and living as it happens something we’ve never seen or heard before—a single voice, speaking to mankind, guileless, with no agenda, and with a blinding honesty we all need to understand. Space tends to do that to us. Our fathers and mothers stood transfixed in 1969, knowing what adults know, and watching Neil Armstrong step on the moon. Later the drama of Apollo Thirteengalvanized the planet, to the extent that communications were able to bring the globe together. And today? A planetary audience is reading or listening in dozens of languages to every word Kip Dawson writes. An audience of perhaps two billion—that’s with a “B"—two billion members of the human family. Perhaps it takes something like this to truly remind us how connected we really are.

Okay. First, let’s get to the basics of what’s happened.

With a pedestrian mini-bar scotch in her hand, in a plush Los Angeles hotel room, Diana Ross settles into an easy chair, thinking over the day’s events. The TV is on, the story doing just what she’d predicted now and turning to phase three, the story about what he’s saying and how he’s saying it.

She shakes her head at the coincidence of Kip going silent just before Coleman’s show hit the air. Intellectually she knows his producer had nothing to do with it. But it gave Matt Coleman an invaluable window of opportunity to feed the void in Kip’s transmission with his own spin, and given the deep public hunger for more, the size of tonight’s audience has to be a record.

Kip’s last-typed words still hang along the bottom of the screen, the end of a surprisingly introspective tale of his second marriage and how the progressive withdrawal of sexual interest by Sharon Summers Dawson affected him slowly, insidiously, exacerbated by her refusal to admit there was anything wrong between them. He wrote about his frustration and his attempts to ignore it. He talked about trying to tell himself it was okay, that he could survive semi-celibacy as Sharon became sexually colder.

But she’s been wholly unprepared to read that Kip fantasized about her while in training in Mojave—a revelation written with her name clearly attached that’s led to an instant phone explosion and morning show bookings for tomorrow. She’s gone through a series of rapid responses from shock to embarrassment to anger to a growing, deep sense of connection.

So I affected him that much!

For several hours she’s been worried that he’ll say more, take his fantasy into the literary bedroom or something equally tawdry. After all, he could say anything at all with the secure “knowledge” that no one in his time would read it. And when he began describing the feelings their one dinner together had sparked in his love-starved head—thoughts that maybe he should consider ending his marriage and looking for someone like her to love—it was not a welcome accolade. Half the planet has now been invited to think of her as a virtual pinup girl, if not a potential homewrecker.

How on earth am I going to deal with this tomorrow or even live this down?she wonders. Even Playboyis now trying to reach her. At the same time she feels guilty that she’s irritated over his words when the man has less than forty-eight hours of air left and has absolutely no intention of embarrassing her. And in the end, she decides to deal with the morning show questions by laughing it off. After all, she’s done nothing to encourage him, and these are only the private musings of a dying man.

Nevertheless, the same questions keep echoing in her head. Why now? Why me?

She knows the answer, but she’s been avoiding the conclusion: She’s in his head.

And now, somehow, he’s in hers.

Waking from each nap is becoming more and more confusing.

Somehow Kip has developed the ability to fall almost immediately into REM sleep, something he could never do on Earth. But coming out of REM is a slightly wrenching experience, the dreams left behind so real and visceral that each time he has to think carefully about what is and isn’t real.

But then the full reality of his situation returns.

This time the dream was all about sex and lovemaking and he hates to leave it. He wonders if there’s sex in whatever dimension he’ll find himself occupying in two days. If not, he thinks, maybe he’d rather not go—as if he had a choice. It was sex and the lack of making love (or even the lack of opportunity to have raw sex with Sharon), that has all but destroyed his marriage.

And of everything in this life, he thinks he’ll miss sex the most.

If that’s how I measure my existence, in terms of how much I’ve been getting,he thinks, I was already near death.

The thought makes him chuckle and he considers writing something really steamy in the computer, just to show his future reader who he really is, the lusty Kip Dawson, a lover devoted to the female of the species who didn’t get much practice.

He poises his fingers over the keyboard, visualizing Diana Ross, wondering how tastefully yet graphically he could describe how he’d like a night with her to unfold, a menu of delights with her pleasure at the center while Conway Twitty sings “Slow Hand” in the background. “Bolero,” he thinks, was never his style.

Of course he could substitute any pretty female in such a narrative, but then it would be no more than mental masturbation. No, if he’s going to fantasize in writing, it should be Diana, whom he can see so clearly.

Why shouldn’t I try my hand at erotic narrative? No one in her time will see it, and I’ve already said I was thinking about her that way.

But then he feels a twinge of Puritanical alarm, as if even his demons will be straight-laced enough to be embarrassed at his prurient thoughts. But he needs a more practical reason to stay his hand, and he finds it in chivalrous concern for Diana. Even if his words weren’t found until she was a much older woman, such self-indulgent X-rated musings could embarrass her, and he would never want that.

He laughs again at how different the mental wiring is between male and female, and how abysmally unaware most women are of the simplicity of the male mind on the subject of sex.

Think driving force of life! Think the most beautiful element of life. Think I’d rather die without it.

He’s had no hope of getting that through to Sharon, or getting her to understand how destructive her disinterest in making love has been, and how it’s essentially doomed them.