The Long Road to Gaia (4 page)

The others looked as if they hadn't moved.
Most likely they hadn't. Time for us is fluid. We could live a millennium, and
still be back here an eye blink after leaving. Actually, that was a good
thought. Maybe a millennium would give me some time to think, and time to drop
in on more of the future, so I could see firsthand how humans developed over
the next six hundred years. I wondered why I hadn't. It was already too late.
The time lock again, I suspected.

"So," said One. "Has your
opinion of humans altered at all?"

I thought about it. Certainly, I'd not seen
what I'd expected.

"One family doesn’t demonstrate what
the species as a whole is like," I said at last.

"True," said Kali. "But this
family will be the flag bearer for the human race as it launches itself to the
stars. Even if they are not representative of all human kind, are they not
worth looking after?"

"Perhaps. Do they need to be looked
after?"

"At times," said Ganesha,
"yes. Their future is a slender thread in the tapestry of the galaxy. If
the thread breaks, the tapestry will unravel."

"So what if it does?"

"Darkness will fall," said One.
"I've seen it. I won't allow it to happen."

"What is darkness to me?" I
responded. "I'm a dark matter nebulae after all. Most things in the galaxy
are light compared to me."

"There is darkness," said Four,
"and there is Darkness. Dark it is between the light of the suns, and we
the nebulae which light the spaces between the suns, while birthing new suns.
But darkness of the soul is something much different, and it is this darkness
which threatens to overrun the lesser species of the galaxy. For now, it is
contained. This will not always be so."

"Why don’t you do the work to ensure
it remains contained?"

"All of us will," said Two.
"But only you can keep the thread intact."

"This family are so important?"

"The family as such," said Kali,
"no. But a few of them across six hundred years, yes."

"Why not just drop me in at the needed
times?"

"Because time is fluid," said
One. "Only by following it forward will you be in the right place, at the
right time, to subtly effect its flow, and keep the thread intact. And besides,
as previously said, eventually you will be asked to intervene, and only by
taking this journey in full, will you understand your role when it counts the
most."

"I don’t like being used this
way."

"We know," said Twelve. "But
it is necessary."

I looked at them without saying anything.
They looked back at me.

I sighed. Damn, that was a human mannerism.
I was already being sucked into this. Undoubtedly this was why the meeting was
time locked, so the human form could influence me just by being locked into it.

"Fine. I'll babysit this family for
you."

"We knew you would," said One.

"The boy I just saw, the one who
thinks he's going into space? What's his name?"

Kali smiled.

"Hunter," she said.
"Jonathon Hunter."

The middle aged man stepped out of the taxi
in front of the hotel. His hair was thinning, his short beard was grey, and he
was no longer the thin athletic build of his youth. His head ached, and he was
tired from the journey.

He looked around. The main street was
almost empty, of anything. A couple of cars further up, was all. A few people,
dressed in white, walking. Opposite the hotel was an empty field, with a sign
in Portuguese. Parking lot, I whispered to him. The road was pretty normal, but
the field was brown clay.

Further down the road, there was a lot of
white and blue paint, and another sign. He couldn’t read it at this distance,
but he could guess what it said. It was after all, why he was here.

The taxi driver unloaded his cases, and
they moved inside. The receptionist didn’t speak any English, but he was the
only one checking in, so there wasn’t a problem.

Until she tried to lead him upstairs. He
made no-no noises, and she sighed heavily, and went back to get a different
key. She led him out the back of the building to a row of single story rooms,
overlooking the large front garden of the house next door. It was overgrown,
and a workman was using a whipper snipper to do the job of a ride on mower.

Noise. Just what he needed.

The room had not been prepared, so he had
to wait a short while, as sheets and towels appeared, and things were made
ready.

On the plane, he'd read '101 Tips for the
John of God Brazil Experience'. For the fourth time. He tested the shower. One
quarter turn, as the book suggested. Hot water, yes. One full turn, the water
went through warm and turned cold. Exactly the opposite of home, where you
turned the tap on full to get hot water. Chalk one up for the book, he thought.

The room was basic. More than one star, but
not quite up to two star. The bed was hard, and the base squeaked as he sat on
it. He sighed, and wondered why he'd come.

Left alone, the drone going on outside, he
lay down, and went to sleep.

Twelve was sitting at the table when I
appeared in our meeting place. I shook my head. He was at the far end of the
table, where he'd been during our first meeting here.

I sat in my chair on the other side of the
table, and waved to the chair opposite me. He balked, and I waved again, more
emphatically this time. So far, he hadn't shifted each time we met, and the
conversation had been held down half the length of the table.

Twelve hesitated, looked around as if to
see if anyone would mind if he moved, and reluctantly sat opposite me.

Neither of us spoke for a time.

"So," we both said together.

I held a hand out, palm up, giving him the
go to speak first.

"He got there okay?"

"Yes. It was a grueling trip, but he
made it. The cabin staff on two of the flights are going to remember that
flight for a long time."

"Make sure he sticks to the
rules."

"I know."

"The stakes are high, Thirteen. Don’t make any mistakes."

"I know."

"He's only fifty five. He won't see
his life's ambition until he's in his early eighties. It is essential he lives
that long."

"I know."

"The Entities are ready for him. They
know what he needs, better than he does."

"I know."

"See he follows the rules."

"I KNOW!"

"Calm down Thirteen."

I sighed.

I knew all this. I didn't need it rammed
down my human throat.

"I'm loosely attached to him. He
doesn’t know I'm there. But except for the salad on the plane I told him not to
eat, he normally follows what I suggest. He'll get told. Trust me. Anything
else?" I asked.

"No, I just wanted to make sure you
understood."

"Fine. Can I go now?"

"Yes."

I left behind a small cloud of purple
smoke, just for the effect.

The sign said "
Casa De Dom
Inacio." All was blue and white. The buildings were blue near the ground,
and white for the top half. The people all wore white.

He stood there, in front of rows of seats, looking into the
main hall. More rows of seats, mostly full. As he looked around, he noticed
they were all occupied, both inside and out. He wasn’t late. People must get
here early.

At the front of the main hall, was a raised
area. At the back of it, was a wooden triangle. Someone was leaning against it,
arms laid up the wooden sides.

Suddenly, everything changed.

He was standing in the middle of nowhere.
The clay was the same colour, as were the clumps of grass and small bushes.

There was nothing at all around him. No
buildings, no people, no roads, no sign of anything familiar. He was alone in the
wilderness.

Not quite nothing, and not quite alone.

Some way away, was some sort of ship, which
he could only call bizarre in shape. Near it was a pretty girl in a one piece
dark red overall, which looked rather like it was leather.

Now he noticed, he was wearing the same
thing himself. And suddenly he wasn’t, now wearing a white suit.

Abruptly, he was back at the Casa, wearing
the white pants and t-shirt he'd put on that morning for the first time.

He swayed in place for a moment,
disoriented.

"Are you okay Jon?" asked the
lady in white standing beside him.

She hadn't been there a moment before, but
he knew who she was. He'd needed a Casa Guide to come here with, and they had
met for the first time the day before.

"I just had the strangest vision, I guess
you’d call it."

"Oh? What was it?"

I whispered to him.

"It was like I was standing right
here, but in a completely different time. Everything here was gone."

"The past?"

I whispered to him again.

"No, it felt like the future. There
was a girl there, dressed very strangely. And a sort of a ship in the
distance."

"Weird."

"You're telling me!"

She handed him a small token. The only
thing on it he recognized was '1
^st
'. She led him over to a seat,
where they joined other members of the group, and they waited.

There was a lot of amplified talk in
Portuguese. It went on and on. Occasionally there was a break, with someone
else talking accented English.

People formed into lines, and vanished
inside. The group members dwindled.

"This is you," said the Guide suddenly,
who could speak Portuguese.

As he joined the line, he heard "first
time line" spoken in English. The line vanished inside.

The Guide was waiting inside when the line
took him to the Entity, and waiting again when he came out.

"He said 'Intervention'", the
Guide said. "You're done for this morning. Be back here at one thirty, and
you'll be on the first line in for your spiritual operation. I’d suggest you
spend some more time on the grounds and soak in the energy here."

He could feel the energy. It rose up out of
the ground, and made his palms tingle.

He nodded, and headed away from the main
building, where he found some large wooded seats. He sat. The sign said
'Silencio'. He had no reason to talk.

When he came out again early that afternoon,
he was light headed, and weak. He felt like he'd been opened up from heart to
hip, after someone slipped a sleeping draft into his drink.

The Guide walked him to a window, where he
paid for a bottle of herb capsules. Then down to an eating area, where the
local vegetable soup revolted him, but he made an effort to eat half of it.
From there to a taxi, and back to his room.

"Go straight to bed," the Guide
had said.

"Go directly to bed," I said.
"Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred Reals."

He chuckled at what he thought was his own
joke. But he went to bed. His dinner was brought to him, interrupting his
sleep, but he couldn’t eat. He went back to sleep. In the morning, breakfast
being brought to him, woke him up. He bolted it down and went back to bed. Late
in the morning, he awoke again, and got up. He felt sluggish, like he'd been in
hospital for a week. He pulled out a book, and sat reading until his lunch
arrived, which he also wolfed down. Midafternoon, the Guide knocked on his
door, and told him he could come out now. His twenty four hours of isolation
was up. He thanked her, and went back to his book.

Three weeks later, after a further two
Interventions, and what felt like a third when he visited the Waterfall, he was
almost ready to leave. He was mainly packed, but his taxi to the airport wasn’t
due until late afternoon. Breakfast had come and gone, but it was still very
early.

Crash! Thump. Crash. His room shook. Dust
came down from the gaps between the boards of the ceiling. The thumping
continued.

He poked his head out the door. Furniture
filled the area. The door to the next room was open, so he poked his head
around it.

A workman was using some sort of crow bar
ram thingy to smash the ceiling boards. He went back to his room and began to
cringe at the noise and vibration.

I politely suggested to the workman he
should stop, but he wasn’t listening.

After a while, the noise stopped. Reading
was more pleasant again.

Crash! The noise and vibration started up
again in the room on the other side.

It didn’t take more than a nudge to get him
to go and complain formally. But no, there was no other room available on the
ground level. And there was no way he wanted to carry his cases upstairs for
just a few hours. I whispered to him again, and he played the 'I can't cope'
card. It didn’t seem to work.

He went back to his room and continued trying
to read, while cringing. I went back, and whispered into the receptionist's
ear.

A short time later, she showed up at his
room, and he was moved. The room was larger, and the bathroom was huge. But
like he'd seen in India a few years earlier, there was no shower surround at
all. A much nicer room than he had been in, but the beds were both rock hard,
and it obviously wasn’t ready for an occupant. He expressed his thanks.

The day passed. When he idly wondered what
all the destruction had been about and why they hadn't waited for him to be
gone before beginning, I whispered the answer to him.

"It represents your past life being
torn away, to make room for the new life to begin."