Memoirs of a Timelord (4 page)

       "He tells it better.  You'll just mess it up." Shanti flashed me a smug grin as she continued to bait him.

       "Just tell me already." I was irritated.  No one likes to be in the dark about their wake, even if you have no idea what it is.

       "Alright." Nodding in agreement Bara sat up and looked me in the eye.  "Okay, but first you gotta tell me about that day you won your silver star." Bara turned it back on me.  Why he wanted to know about that day of all days was beyond me.

       "What about it?  I pulled a few guys outta danger while under fire, so what?" I shrugged it off, not sure why it was important.

       "What was going through your mind as you did it?" The big hairy guy asked me point blank.  There was the barest hint of a smirk on his face as he watched me intently.

       "Mostly I was thinking 'Gee, I hope they don't shoot my little brown ass with that RPG." My tone was involuntarily nasty.  It always was when that day was mentioned.

       "Classic denial." Shanti's words elicited a nod of agreement from Bara as the two of them shared a knowing look.

       "That all that was goin' thru yer mind that day?" Bara gave the barest hint of a smile as he spoke, leaning forward so he could look me in the eyes.

       Rising up to a sitting position, Sasquatch tapped my forehead with a great meaty finger. "You weren't afraid of dying because you had help up there, didn't ya?"

       I recoiled when I realized what he was getting at.  Then my mind automatically went into denial mode.

       "What?" I acted like I had no idea what he was talking about, but on the inside I was trying to figure out how he knew about the voices.  How the hell did he know about my imaginary friends?  I hadn't told a soul about them since I was six and learned about lobotomies.  All I ever wanted to be was normal like other kids, not some pariah with auditory hallucinations.  So over the years I had learned to keep a poker face each time the whisperings would tell me something about the person I just met, or warn me of impending danger.  As far as I was concerned, my insanity was my personal business.  I never even told DorLek about the voices because I was afraid being crazy would disqualify me from becoming a Temporal Editor.  Think about it; would you let a crazy person be CEO of a galaxy? Hell no, you prolly wouldn't even let me drive your car. If that happened then I'd never get home to my daughter.  

       "So lemme guess," He smirked, flashing multiple rows of yellowing teeth, "your whole life you thought you were a nut-job because you heard funny things.  Voices that talked to you late at night, ghosts that would visit you, and lotsa stuff like that, right?  But the voices were always right, weren't they?  Even when they told you things that you couldn't have possibly known.  And how about those voices since you started living at the old man's house?  They changed, didn't they?  Almost like talking to different people altogether, eh?  Or how about since you got here to my place?  Different still?" Stopping to eye me, he watched my reaction with keen interest.

         After a lifetime of denial, I was stunned.  How do you keep pretending like you have no idea what he's talking about when everything he said was torn right from your own mind?  The voices had changed since I was harvested, changed a lot.  The very tone of the whispers was different, and they did not always answer when I called.  Then since I got to this place, they seemed almost leery of me.  The whispers just felt alien somehow.

       "The voices you hear in your head are not imaginary, they're very real." Giving a nod, Bara let that soak in. 

       "How do you know about...?" I trailed off, not sure how to phrase the question.  "Can you hear my thoughts...?

       "Those voices in your brain are the Guf." Giving a smile, he watched me carefully before proceeding.

       "The Guf?  The Well of Souls?" My voice had an incredulous tone to it.  I'd learned the term back in Sunday school, but I was having a little trouble understanding what the voices in my head had to do with some ancient Christian dogma.

       "See, your people have it all backwards.  Humans believe that souls originate in the Guf, come to Earth, then die and go to heaven.  But that's all bass-ackwards.  All life begins here in the physical plane.  When a life form dies, their essence is drawn into the Guf where they join all of the other entities who have gone before them.  You cannot destroy energy, only convert it, and the essence you call a soul is really just energy." Giving a shrug, he took a big gulp of his drink as his eyes watched me carefully.

       "So all these years and I'm just a Shyamalin plotline?  I see dead people" I hissed like a character from the movie.  

       "Hey, it's better than being nuts.  Look, the Guf isn't just dead people, it's every living being that has ever existed within that galaxy.  Think of it as a mass consciousness of divine proportions." He nodded as he spoke, still watching me closely.  "Do you know why God is all powerful and all knowing?"

       "Because she's God, duh." I gave a flippant answer.

       "No, it's because he's seen it all, done it all, and experienced every imaginable concept firsthand.  Think about this; if you pack the collective souls of an entire galaxy into the Guf, and I'm talking rabbits, and bees, and plants, and every last microbe that has ever held a spark of life, then there would be no experience or concept that the Guf would not understand intimately.  Remember, it's a mass consciousness so the experiences of each individual are shared with the collective.  If the Boss hadn't harvested you from your deathbed, you'd be a brain cell in a baby god's head right now.  Actually, to be wholly accurate, you would be a brain cell in a fetus.  Now do you understand?  When you look into the eyes of a god, countless trillions of eyes look back."

       I was not sure how to respond to that.  On one hand I felt like I'd been accosted by some church nut in a gorilla costume, but on the other hand...I'd been carrying on conversations with dead people my whole life so who was I to call anyone a nut for their odd religious beliefs.  I sat there for a few moments before I asked the only coherent question I could think of.

       "I thought we went to heaven or hell?" I was a little disappointed; they'd promised me chocolate for all eternity if I was good.

       "Heaven and Hell are just different conditions of the Guf.  You fill it with too many bad souls and it'd be hell, or a prison movie.  Fill it mainly with good souls and it'd be heaven.  This is why we socially engineer our galaxies, to ensure the quality of the material filling the Guf.  You're gonna spend all eternity in there so you wanna make sure it's not a ghetto in there." He shrugged before sliding into a new spot on the floor.  

       Sitting down on the ground cross-legged, I posed my next question.

       "Bad souls go to heaven too?"

       "Yep." He nodded.

       "Idi Amin and Stalin and Hitler all go to Heaven?" I was dismayed.

       "Yep." Again he agreed.

       "That's bullshit, why would murderers and sociopaths get to be saved for all eternity?  Why the hell did we all follow the Ten Commandments and all that crap if we're all going to the same place anyhow?" I was floored, it just seemed patently wrong.

       "Lemme ask you another question.  Was Audie Murphy a bad man?  How about Alvin York?  Congressional Medal of Honor winners, good Christian men, yet they both murdered dozens of men in combat." Bara rubbed his armpits as he gave me a moment to consider the question before continuing.

       "Murdered?" I let a hint of irritation creep into my voice.  Bara ignored me and continued on with his explanation.

       "See, those guys had a dark side, and they knew how to call upon it when it was needed.  Then when the shooting was over, they put it back in a little box, nice and safe.  If they hadn't had that ability to call upon their dark side they woulda been pussies, and the Germans woulda wiped 'em out like every other GI.  Audie and Alvin were not axe murderers, they were just men who knew how to call upon that darkness when it was necessary, and lock that shit up tight the rest of the time.  Look, once you wrap your head around the concept that your galaxy is just a womb for a baby god, you come to understand that we want that extracorporeal child to be strong, yet compassionate, the kind of deity that knows when to call upon its dark side, and when to keep it in a box.  As a Timelord you have to balance the good against the bad in just such a way that you are creating a benevolent being that can stand up for itself, but not be a complete axe murderer.  I mean you wouldn't wanna give infinite power to a sociopath would you?  Figuring out the right mix will be your job.  That's why you were chosen, because you are the true prophet for the Milky Way Galaxy, the one who can not only hear the Guf, but talk back to it, sense what's in its mind.  With your finger on the pulse, you will know exactly which way the embryo needs to be steered.  This is why only a true prophet can be a Timelord.  For anyone else it'd be like driving blindfolded.  You're here to be a god's embryonic nanny, and raise that kid right."

       As my mind raced at the speed of light I absentmindedly finished off that glass of milk.  Pow, zoom, to the moon, the Cree hit me like a truck...but a clear-headed buzz.  Cree doesn't make you stupid like Earth booze.  But it does a really great job of calming your nerves.  Mmmmm, Cree...

       Even with the power of DuNai processors in my brain running at full speed, I was having trouble taking it all in.  I'd been raised in a Church family, but I hadn't attended since I moved out on my own.  Still, I had been programmed with basic Christian values and beliefs.  It was hard to be told that most of what I had learned was wrong.  But then again, humans were essentially cavemen compared to the DuNai.  Homo Sapiens were only ten thousand years out of a loincloth. Most Dunai lived three times that long.

        "What'd you mean that I created a wake as soon as I got here?" I tried to focus.

       "Hmmmph." He gave a pleased grunt before answering.  "True prophets cause a wake when they enter a galaxy, like a disturbance in the Force. Y'know?  See, anytime you approach a living being, it'll tend to react one way or another to you.  The Guf is alive, and it will react to those of us who can converse with it.  The reason you felt like the voices were different since you died is because they are.  Kid, I don't know if the old man told you or not, but not only are you not in Kansas anymore, you're not even in the same galaxy.  For the last few years you've been chatting with a strange Guf."

       "...and this place...?" I asked, gesturing to the cave around me.

       "Is another galaxy entirely.  Different Guf than the Boss' place" He finished my sentence.

       I took that in for a few moments before asking my next question.

       "Shanti made it sound like I had a big wake, am I flawed or something?  Does it mean I have a big ass?" I was always waiting for the third shoe to drop.

       "Nothing wrong with your wake, it's just immense.  Even as a plebe your chi is off the charts, girl.  I've met trained Lords who didn't have the kinda abilities you have right outta the box." Bara nodded a reassurance.  "Did you know the Boss was in the Sombrero galaxy when you were born.  He felt your wake clear out there.  Granted, the old guy is waaaaaay more sensitive than I am, but still, the Sombrero galaxy?  That's hell and gone from Earth.  Kiddo, I've met 'em all, from Jesus to Mohammed, and none of 'em had the amperage that you do."

       I sat back, pleased to learn that not only was I not crazy, but I was powerfully sane...or something like that.  After a lifetime of hiding my shameful secret, it turns out to be my only ticket home from the grave.  Well, whooda thunk?

       "So you're saying that Jesus wasn't really..." I trailed off for the right words, "the son of God?"

       "Of course he was, we're all sons and daughters and saughters of God." He shrugged to accent what he was saying.

       "Saughters?" I asked quickly.

       "Non-genderal species have children too.   Looksee, Jesus and Muhammad and Moses and all those guys you learned about in Sunday school were just like you, they were prophets of the Guf, they had the voices in their head too.  But unlike you, they could only hear the Guf.  You can talk to it, converse with it, even command it to some degree, and that makes you the True Prophet.  Kid, you're not just one in a million, you're one in an octillion.  Even among the DuNai, abilities like ours are extremely rare."

       Didra held out her hand over my empty glass.  Immediately more milk poured out of her fingertip until my cup nearly ranneth over.  I had so many questions to ask that they were running into each other and causing a traffic jam in my brain.

       "So I'm gonna be God's nanny?" Something didn't make sense about the whole thing.

       "God?  Hell no." He snorted.  "A god, yes.  But not the God.  More people have landed on your moon than have seen the face of God.  The Boss is one of 'em.  All we know is that the creator made this multiverse, and planted these galaxies like eggs in a clutch, but no one has seen the guy for eons.  Some DuNai scholars believe he's dead, they say he spent his entire essence creating the universe, and when he was done there just wasn't nothin' left of him."  

       "You believe that Nietzsche crap?" I asked him, feeling a little defensive for the Christian God I had grown up believing in.

       "Nah, he's still out there, waiting for his children to mature and join him...wherever the hell Gods live." Another nod and a swig from his glass.  "But that's somethin' none of us is gonna know for sure until our galaxies reach ascension."

       

       

       I woke up the next morning in my own bed.  I vaguely remembered being carried home over a big, hairy shoulder, but nothing explained the taste of dead rat in my mouth.