by James Harris
As they stood up and left the bridge, Asunda communicated to the ship’s brain to modify the communication to only transmit images of “importance.” Asunda defined for the machine what “important” criteria were. Instantly the flood of information bombarding his mind slowed to a tiny trickle. He couldn’t help but blink rapidly several times as his mind cleared.
The pair strode down the short narrow hallway to their tiny quarters. Kor paused outside the door. “I followed you yesterday,” he said excitedly. “I know where you went.”
“Did you, now? What prompted you to do that?”
“You were acting strangely. I was curious.”
“I’ll have to mask my emotions better.”
“Asunda, why didn’t you tell me where you were going?”
“There was a curfew because of the radiation. Able City was closed to everyone.”
“Except you?”
“Would you have permitted me to go, Prince Kor?”
Kor flushed. “You know I wouldn’t have allowed it. It was too dangerous.”
“And yet you followed me.”
“I was concerned for your safety.”
“And not your own?”
“I didn’t think about that. I figured I was capable of going any place you went.”
“You are either brave or reckless.”
‘I saw you as you left City Control.”
Asunda stiffened. “I am aware of that.” Asunda suddenly pictured, in his mind’s eye memory, a vague recollection of someone, whom he now realized was Kor, huddled and hiding from view. He had seen the figure as the lightning strike illuminated City Control as they were getting into the MTV. “What did you think you saw?”
“Don’t try to work me, Asunda. I saw you evacuate a female and …”
“… and what?”
“You know perfectly well. You evacuated several Ancients. You apparently saved them from death. But what did you really save, Asunda? They’re not even alive. You risked a lot to save these … these … statues. Why?”
“You spied on me, tadpole?”
“Don’t tadpole me, Asunda. I am not a child any more.”
Asunda turned on Kor and barked unexpectedly. “What were you thinking!”
Kor was taken aback.
“You risked not only your own life, but your responsibility as a future King of Narok to follow me?”
“I … uh …”
“You acted like a fool! I take risks because I can. I am a wizard, Kor. I have powerful skills. In addition, I am not of noble blood. You are. You can never take such risks again. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” Kor said. He was hurt. “I wanted to cover your back, Asunda. I wanted to help you if you got into trouble.”
Asunda softened. “I know you did.” He placed a brotherly arm around Kor. “You were thinking about me and not about the risks to yourself. It was a selfless act and I appreciate it.”
“You’re not angry?”
“I was. But since everything seems to have worked out, I guess I’m OK.” He continued as Kor brightened: “I’ll make you a deal. We’ll keep our trip to Able City between the two of us.”
“Deal. My father would not be pleased.”
“You can say that again.”
They entered their tiny quarters in good spirits, having cleared the air. Built-in creamy-brown loungers lined the wall. Kor immediately flopped onto one. Asunda sat cautiously, graciously, on another directly across from him.
“Kor. On to other important matters. You must take your lessons more seriously from here on in. The sun will go supernova sooner than any of us expected. The king has already asked me to prepare you to lead a small group of scout ships to find a new world. We must hurry our production and evacuation timetable.”
“I thought this exploration trip was a big state secret,” Kor said sarcastically.
“It was. Not the best kept secret, as you well know. No one knew that it was you who was to lead the scout ships.”
“Because everyone thinks that I’m too young?”
“Partly because of your inexperience. However, it was concluded that few if any had this type of experience anyway. It was more important to make sure the heir to the House of Narok survived this catastrophe.”
“Inexperience. Youth. You are almost as young as I am,” Kor said.
“Sire. Do not let my lack of old age denote lack of wisdom and insight. I come from a long line of prophets and wizards.”
“You have the Gift,” Kor sniffed haughtily. “Well, so do I.”
“You’d never know it by the way you carry on. The Gift is not some skill like playing a musical instrument. That can be encoded. The Gift can’t be programmed by some learning pod.”
“What about wizards? Their gifts are passed on from generation to generation. Is that not genetic encoding?”
“True, but wizards have talents beyond the Gift. Besides, there is no guarantee of the strength of the Gift from generation to generation. Some wizards have a weak gift.”
“And some others, like me, not even a wizard, have a strong one.”
“Unusually strong. It is most curious indeed. Clearly your mother is a powerful wizard. Perhaps she purposely hides her strength from her subjects.”
“If the Gift can’t be entirely traced genetically, what then?”
“If the Gift cannot be traced to your genetically coded body, then it can only be found in your immortal Being. There are no other alternatives.”
“You and I are like gods then?” Kor liked the sound of that.
“Hardly,” Asunda chuckled. “That conjures up images of the gods of ancient folklore that had control over humans by punishing wrongdoing and rewarding righteousness.”
“I can make people do things whenever I choose,” Kor said coyly.
“I know you can.”
“It doesn’t work on you though.”
“Of course not. I am your Master. I taught you. It goes without saying that I can sense you and ignore your push.”
“I have been practicing.”
“The Voice or the push?”
“Both together. I can do both.”
“Show me. Give me a demonstration.”
Without pause, Kor talked in a soothing yet authoritative tone to Asunda. His eyes bored into him. His head turned imperceptibly sideways and he unconsciously turned both palms outward and upward.
Asunda felt the shove of the push as if struck solidly by a heavy pillow in a pillow fight. It took some air out of his gut, but he skillfully blocked the intrusion into his mind. Without movement, he pushed back with more than equal force, but not too much. This was more like exercising muscles.
Kor was thrown back against the wall behind the lounger. He grunted as he sucked in air. “You call that a push?” He smiled devilishly as he doubled his energy and focus. His hands began to tremble with the effort.
Asunda showed no sign of flinching, but the attack by Kor was very forceful. The youth had a Gift akin to that of a skilled wizard. Asunda focused on Kor. His push was much stronger this time. Still, his response was measured and limited. His demeanor remained serene as Kor was thrown back once more, this time against the lounger.
Kor yelped. He decided to retaliate forcefully this time. Kor’s face began to glisten with perspiration. His veins, clearly visible through his translucent skin, grew larger. They changed from red to purple as the oxygen was quickly extracted from the veins. His large round black eyes began to blink rapidly.
Asunda signaled “stop” with a flinch of his hand like someone swishing away a fly.
Kor was surprised. “Give up?” he said with a triumphant smile.
Ignoring him, Asunda stared blankly across the room. He was focusing on a computer communication on his eye screen. He was communicating nonverbally with the ship’s main brain. He turned and smiled ironically at Kor. “Congratulations. You have managed to disrupt the main computer with your pushing.”
“Me? It was you, too,” Kor sp
uttered.
They both laughed. These days laughter was sparse.
“You are progressing well. Let’s call that last push a good exercise, but all for now. How did you feel?”
“I felt like my mind was caught in a vise. Like a headache, yet the pain was more universal. No, it wasn’t pain exactly it was pressure. Like an invisible pair of hands had shoved me in the chest.”
“I observed your body movements. They were a giveaway to your push.”
“Such as …”
“Such as your head and hand movements. They told me you were about to push. Your intended targets will also know and will be able to deflect your intrusion by shielding themselves.”
“I will practice, Asunda. I also wish to perfect the Voice, the song of the universe. I believe it will be useful on less developed creatures that I may encounter at the end of my space voyage.”
“Wisely spoken, Kor. Shall we begin some more advanced exercises?”
CHAPTER25
Kor and Asunda were holed up for the remainder of the short journey to moon Alpha. Their quarters were cramped, yet the friends didn’t mind. The rest of the crew shared the remainder of the quarters. Asunda accelerated Kor’s training with some intense exercises in mind over body, aura strengthening, Signature masking, and Being awareness and meditation. Much emphasis was put on managing the mind control that allowed the connection between the Being with the present mind-body.
Asunda led Kor through a series of mind-dampening disciplines that sequentially neutralized the mind’s ego defenses. Once this was accomplished, the Being was revealed, freed from the shackles of the mind’s numbing filters. For Kor, it was as if a dark cloak, representing his mind’s protective ego, had been yanked off an orb of pure light, representing his Being. It never failed to be a breathtakingly joyous affair. A breathless rush of pure ecstasy. The Being was pure bliss.
“These sessions of meditation are helpful, Master Asunda. I feel empowered and connected to a higher plane of existence.”
“Yes. And the more you connect with that plane, the easier it is the next time. You draw strength from the exposure. Your Gift will grow stronger.”
“You spend a lot of time in meditation, do you not?”
“I do.”
“There’s a feeling of … what’s the right word … ecstasy. Do you not find it difficult to return to this mortal world?”
“It seems a burden to return. However, I realize that my mortal days are short. I have work to do here in this world and at this time.”
“So you don’t dread returning?”
“Of course not. Dread is an inappropriate term. I have responsibilities. I believe I have a destiny to fulfill.”
“As I do.”
“Most definitely you, of all people, have a destiny, an historic inevitability, to guide our people from this planet to our next home.”
“Hmmm. I look at the situation as a matter of my job as the sovereign of the House of Narok. I have a duty to my people, nothing more glamorous than that.”
“Destiny and glamour are rare bedfellows. Don’t get all puffed up about history and destiny. You are correct to view yourself as performing a duty. Let someone else’s ego take the bows. You don’t need that phantom crutch of ego satiation.”
Kor clasped his hands behind his neck as he stretched out on the lounger. “Still, savior of mankind has a ring to it.”
“A job well done has a louder ring, my protégé. Tell me, when you are meditating and drifting in the other plane, what do you see? What do you feel? What are you thinking?”
“Trick question, Master? You know perfectly well I am thinking of nothing, nothing at all. But I do have feelings that I can describe as floating in a bath of tingling liquid … no maybe better described as liquid sound. It is beyond hearing music; it is a physical, tactile encounter with sound. I don’t walk. I have no body. I’m aware of things more than seeing them. Seeing gives you half a field of vision. When I’m aware, I visualize an entire 360-degree field of vision. The light is brilliant and rich in color. Around the edges, that is, in the back of my head behind me, I see multi-colored strands of light weaving like reeds of crystal straw in the wind.”
“And sense of time?”
“I see where you are going. It is difficult to describe. It seems like time has no home in this plane; it doesn’t belong, it’s out of place. The passage of time is measurable here, not there. There is no relative position and there is no motivation to measure. There are no needs, wants, or desires. The trick is to return to the present. When there is no time there is no sense of urgency. I can imagine people getting trapped in this plane and never returning. Their minds have been so well trained to shut down, they stay that way because there is no cue to return. How do you do it, Master?”
“First, let me explain why you return. Your mind control is still in its infancy. You can only hold on for so long and then your mind re-engages automatically. For me, it is somewhat different. I have to plant a time sensitive suggestion in my mind to re-engage at a specific point in time.”
“Or you would stay there. Eventually you would die.”
“Some wizards have been known to die in a coma-like state. However, the body has its own fail-safe methods. Once it knows it is dying, the mind will automatically re-engage. That is how the Ancients survive. They exist at levels slightly above survival. They are at a level of control in which they can exist simultaneously in two planes. They are aware of both worlds: one time sensitive and the other timeless. When action is needed, they can be powerful – super human. Remember what happened when we were in Alpha City? It is they who led me and my sister to safety, not the other way around.”
“They can levitate. I saw them.”
“That defies the basic laws of physics. I don’t believe they can do that. But I do believe that they have somehow mastered other planes of existence or perhaps time itself.”
“And time trumps physics?”
“It would appear so.”
“Have I trumped time when I dwell in the world of my Being?”
“Not in the same context.”
“But I don’t see my Being, do I?”
“How could you? You are your Being. You can’t see yourself because you have no physical self. You are aware of being part of a whole … a whole entity beyond your Being.”
“If I died physically while I was meditating and in that world, what would happen?”
“Nothing. There is no difference between dying and travelling to that plane and already being there. You wouldn’t know you had died because that requires a functioning, live brain. The ‘thought’ would have no context or relevance because you would have no thoughts at all.”
“Kor would die.”
“Yes, but you are more than Kor. You are the sum total of all past and future human existences.”
“Future, too?”
“Yes. Like a circle without a start or end point. Your Being is endless, beginning-less, and timeless.”
“Will I remember that I am Kor or once was Kor?”
“No. How could you? Only a brain can remember things, people, and objects. A Being is. It is pure energy, pure joy. It doesn’t have human characteristics, such as memory. Eventually, it moves on. It drifts to the next human body. Your Being is not composed of matter as defined in nature. It is energy without matter. I guess the energy could transform into matter if it chose to, but that would require logic and a will, and that alternative seems irrelevant to our Beings. The universe is home to your Being and it occupies a space within the universe. The flux that is the lifeblood of the cosmos is also the lifeblood of all beings, physical and non-physical. It is the thread that binds all creatures together.”
“Death seems so final. It’s great to talk about this plane and that plane, but it could be self-delusion, Asunda.”
“Some say it is possible that we are deluding ourselves by postulating about our Beings. But in my view, the Ancients are living proof of the other plane
, because they exist in both.”
“Only humans can do this, right? Animals don’t think like us.”
“We are fortunate that we can think and realize that we exist. We are self-aware. On the other hand, we are burdened with the knowledge that we will cease to exist. To many that is a horrific thought. Death, waste, and annihilation, never to live again! A cruel quirk of nature don’t you think?”
“Cruel?”
“Inexorably cruel. Humans, unique in the universe, must live out their lives with the knowledge that they exist for only a short period of time. Their time alive is a cosmic blink of the eye. All life is imperfect and as such, finite. In order for organic life to survive, it has been genetically programmed to die, reproduce, and be regenerated anew.”
“Yes, but our Being is immortal is it not?”
“Yes, but you talk about our Being as if it were a spirit or a ghost with human characteristics and memory. Something we can relate to or imagine. Our Being is not material and not mortal. Understanding the composition of our Being is beyond the grasp of our human mind because we are incapable of comprehending immortality.”
“Mortal humans have a link to our immortal Beings do they not? We have instincts and hunches and feelings.”
“You can trust that ‘inner voice’ above all others. That ‘feeling’ is your Being. It peeks out every so often to help guide you through the course of life. It is usually at odds with your more logically minded brain. My job is to help you gain a greater awareness of your Being.”
“Is this awareness linked to my ability to push?”
“I believe it is. You and I are two of a rare few that are able to do this. I believe that this power is a learned ability to shed the constraints of our minds and allows us to temporarily open up to another place, perhaps where our Being dwells. Our Being is us. It is there to help us in this world but few know how to tap into that energy. You and I can do this.”
The day before the landing on Alpha Moon, Kor brought up the subject of the mission. “If I understand you correctly, we must transfer the minds of millions of people and hope that their Beings will tag along with their crypt-orbs on a journey through outer space. This seems like madness. The Beings won’t do this; they’ll stay with the physical body.”
