Soteria- The Crisis Forge

by Roberto Arcoleo

  Mark continued mumbling, “We are separated. Jason, where are you? I cannot see. Is this really the apartment? Our place?”

  He struggled to regain his clarity, to understand all that was happening. “Yes, but…”

  He tried to walk forward, his vision unclear. He stumbled to his knees. His hands slowly felt their way. Touching the ground, he moved. His fingers found the bed, the chair, the strewn books haphazardly scattered on the floor. He noticed his fingers were starting to glow. His hands, and then his body, began glowing bright colors of yellow and green. He looked up across the room. Jason’s jacket and his guitar – all were still there. The same dingy gray walls. He heard the cries of the cats in the alley. He breathed in the smells from outside his door; all was the same. The emanation within slowed. The color and glow in his limbs faded.

  He sat at the edge of the bed and rested his hands on his legs. He felt pain deep in his center. Examining his body, he said aloud, “But I am intact. Intact, but… different.” He looked at his hands. They had stopped glowing. He turned them upwards. “My hands. They’re still here.” He rubbed them together and then rested them on his thighs. He touched each limb with his hands. “All is here. I am still whole. Jason? Jason, where are you? No, he’s gone. I can feel it. He is gone…”

  “I have failed… Failed.” he cried out as guilt overtook reason; he no longer wanted to live. “If you’re dead, I can’t live. I’ll join you, Jason. I’ll go down into the core and join you. Jason… They promised me you would live. They promised. How can this be?” Mark sobbed.

  Then, suddenly, he felt something – a strong energy slowly starting to churn. Something is moving within me, he thought. Then it started. Mark felt a pounding and a kicking, like a child demanding to leave the womb. The kick turned into a thump, as if someone’s fists were beating a cry for freedom. “I’m within you. I’m in you, Mark. I am here.”

  Mark rose from the bed, and with a burst of elation, he understood: it worked. Jason is within me. Mark knew he must return to the portal and seek help. Confused but excited, he screamed out, “Where is the portal?” He called out, “I need help! Where are you, mother? Where are you?”

  Color and energy swirled, and the portal appeared. As the room vibrated, he saw the face of his mother within its mist. Mark called out, “Mother! Mother, I need your help. Jason is… Jason is –”

  “Yes, I see,” Allaceia, answered. “You have absorbed enough of Jason for us to save him, but you must enter the portal now and come to Eldern. We cannot save Jason while you both remain on Earth. You must come now, my son.”

  “Come to you? How?”

  “You must enter the portal and come home.”

  “But… this is my home.”

  “No, my child. It is not.” She continued, “Enter now. There is no time for sentiment; your brother will die. Every second, Jason loses life. You need to come home now. This is his only hope.”

  “How long will the journey take?”

  “You mean, in Earth time? I’m not sure. Maybe a year, maybe more. It will depend on conditions, many of which are unpredictable… but you must enter the portal this instant. I cannot help Jason if you do not.”

  “But, Gabriela. I must at least say goodbye…” Mark looked over to his closet, where the corduroy jacket he had worn on their first date still hung. Memories of her raced across his mind, his recollections lingering. Mark knew his time on Earth was about to end. He heard a child crying in the hall. The rain was hitting the window with the force of stone pebbles, and he knew he would never see Gabriela again.

  “I’m sorry, my son. You must come now. There is no choice.”

  “Gabriela, my poem…” He entered the swirl and was gone.

  Chapter 50: Gabriela’s Birthday

  Gabriela was dressing to meet Helena for a drink at a new spot called Brandy’s on East 84th Street. It was a piano bar, and everyone had been talking about it. She did not want to make a big fuss about her birthday; three years had passed since she had seen Mark. This was her 39th, and she was not taking out a notice for it in the New York Times. Helena was the only person she wanted to see today, the only person who understood, the only person who knew.

  It was cool for early September. The TV was on in the living room, and all the news commentators were talking about the hostages being taken by terrorists at the Munich Olympics and the failed attempt to rescue them. How impotent the West must look to the world, she thought. Ted Koppel was on the air, unusual for the afternoon; he almost always was on at night. He is definitely the brightest of them. Gabriela looked away from the TV and pondered how different the news might be had it not been for Mark and Jason. She picked up the remote and hit the off button.

  1972 had been a strange year. The music was changing on the airwaves; disco was all the rage. She looked at the radio on her dresser. She reached out, but her hand recoiled. I hate disco... The Beatles had been gone for almost ten years. How I miss them. She looked into the mirror and said aloud, “You sound so old.” She turned the TV back on.

  She had just been going through the motions of life as of late and was bored most of the time, except when she could find Helena for a night out. Helena was more than a friend. Often after a few drinks, they were in each other’s arms, although they both agreed that their primary interest was men. What they shared was incomprehensible to both of them. Gabriela loved Helena’s wildness. She was her release from a life-threatening to drown her in a well of academic claustrophobia. They shared mostly everything from gossip to heartfelt sincerities, and the relationship spanned the years.

  The phone rang, and Gabriela picked up. “Hey, it’s me,” said Helena.

  “Are you dressed yet? I can’t wait to check this place out. I’m so excited.”

  “Yes, I’m almost ready. If you hang up and leave me alone, I can get dressed.”

  “Okay, okay,” she responded. “See you there. Let’s go man hunting tonight.”

  She felt warmth even in brief phone calls. Helena was very smart and well educated, but more than that, she was no-holds-barred, all-in. Gabriela could always count on her for a laugh to help her forget the time they transcended normal life. Both had no shortage of outside lovers; they had even shared a few, but in their late-night talks, amongst the silly chatter reminiscent of high school girls, the conversation always ended in the same place, and though every day, the image of Mark and Jason slipped farther from them, a sadness always returned with the dark. Their memories of them tore away the joy of their evening prowls; for no hopes were found within the embraces of these strangers that could dim the light of those hours, those hours that defied description.

  “Man hunting,” she said aloud. “One of Helena’s favorite lines after her third shot.” She reached for her lipstick.

  These days, Gabriela was living in Helena’s old apartment. It was a great deal for Gabriela, since Helena owned it, and only charged her the monthly common fees. Helena had moved across town shortly after Gabriela’s divorce. She said it was because of the doorman, but Gabriela knew that she was just trying to be a good friend and give her a place to live. Helena, of course, had no concerns about money. She had just inherited, as she put it, “a truckload of it” when her uncle died, and she seemed to be trying to break a record in spending it.

  Gabriela looked into the mirror to finish her makeup. She had acquired a long streak of gray hair. It ran down the side of her forehead and framed her face. As for the rest, it was still long and dark. While some people maintained that she had had it done in a salon, she always boasted that it was natural; she liked the look.

  You’re still looking good, she said to herself. Gabriela had kept her body trim and svelte thanks to her Jane Fonda workout tapes and her constant rushing about town. She watched her diet these days, and always thought of Mark when she ate brown rice and seaweed. As she stood to pull her dress down tightly to her body, her eye caught what she thought was a figure behind her in the mirror. Abruptly she turned around, her
mouth opened wide, and before she could say, “Mark?” it had vanished.

  “Oh my God. What was that?” She gasped. My mind is playing tricks on me.

  Gabriela sat back in her chair, blinking her eyes and thinking how she wanted this wishing apparition to be real. She looked back again and saw only her furniture. How I long for him. Well, he’s gone… Gone, and that’s that, so stop this stupid...

  Just then, her eyes caught sight of an object she had not seen for three years: a pair of black Ray-Bans just like the ones she used to wear, like the pair Mark had returned to her when she created a reason for him to call.

  “Where did these come from?” she heard herself saying.

  She stood up abruptly and with wide eyes looked around the room again, holding the glasses as she questioned the reality of what was in her hand.

  She scoured the room, and then walked out of her bedroom, rapidly surveying the rest of the apartment. It was empty. But I saw him. And there are these. She examined the sunglasses closely and found the scratch that she had made when she had thrown them at her husband. These were the ones, the sunglasses that Mark had put into her hand on that day. But he crushed these with his foot the day I left, didn’t he? She wanted to believe he had returned or sent her a message. She wanted the hope that she would one day see him again. But where is he? Why just this?

  Her anxiety building, Gabriela got up from the bed and walked to her dresser. Unable to think, she started moving about and lit a cigarette, another vice she had appropriated from Helena. As the smoke left her nostrils, a familiar calm returned. Moving, she felt a spring in her step that she had long forgotten, energy flowing in her veins, a spark that she had not sensed in years. “I feel good,” she said to herself as she put on a necklace. Helena is always so picky about the way I look, demanding that my every bangle and bead be so very hip, or at the least this year’s style. Why she seemed to give into Helena’s obsessions often baffled her, but then she remembered that she was living in her apartment practically free.

  Damn, it’s getting late. Her mind was far from clear. She had forgotten that the subway was under repair, and she would have to fight the traffic uptown in a cab. I am supposed to meet her at 84th in two hours. She went to find the phone to tell Helena she might be late when her eyes found the mirror.

  With a gasp, her body recoiled as she limply fell to the floor. After about ten minutes, she felt her head moving on the carpet. Her eyes a blur, her brain began returning. Afraid to look up, she thought to herself, I am going mad. I need to go to a hospital. I will call Helena. She will take me. She’s my friend. But there, lying next to her, were the sunglasses. Her hands trembling, she picked them up. Slowly she rose, regaining her courage, disbelief tightly gripping her. She looked again into the mirror. In amazement, she saw the reflection of a woman of maybe 28, with jet dark hair and silky white skin, brightly clear, glowing with freshness. She heard her words leave her lips: “How can this be?” Her body felt nimble, her breasts high and firm. It was as if she were just a few years out of college, home studying the tango in Barcelona.

  “Mark, what did you do…?”

  Just then, the phone rang. Gabriela picked it up, and half-conscious, still staring at herself in the mirror, managed to say, “Yeah…?”

  She heard Helena’s familiar voice. “Yay, Gabriela! We are going to have to catch the second show at Brandy’s. I am running late.”

  Gabriela responded, “I need you to come here. I need you to come now.”

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “Yes. I mean… no? Just come.”

  Chapter 51: Saya Waits

  It was a cold morning. The windows were fogged over. The gas heater dried the air in the cabin, but the damp forest air would not rest. She rubbed a circle on the pane with her hand and looked out. “Hello, World. I guess we have another day of waiting.” She turned off the kerosene light she had left on after dozing in the middle of Proust. She loved to read by kerosene; there was something so basic about it.

  Saya did not know why she had chosen this place; she knew it was surely thinking in human terms. Maybe because the countryside reminded her of her childhood in China, or maybe it was just the peace she felt there in the mornings.

  There was a stream and a waterfall past the hill, then rocky paths that lead to a gorge, a forest, and many caves. Caves she had foolishly thought could protect her. She often wondered why she had reasoned in this manner. Such a basic and human form of thinking; it surely made little sense. She knew there was no cave that could hide her, so she decided to live in the cabin.

  She had not really spent much time upstate. It was near Ithaca, this new home. This was her fifth move since she had left the city, always wary of staying too long in one place. But this place… this place somehow felt right, after she fixed the leak in the roof, anyway. Cornell was nearby, and there were many students in the area. Her hippie dress and strangeness seemed ordinary. She spent her time developing and trying to remain invisible. It was very silent there. Occasionally, deer broke through her garden, but that was it.

  There were few coffee shops in town; some with bookshelves lined with paperbacks. One even had a free lending policy, and it always had cool music playing in the background, often classical. She knew some of the people found her weird. She never spoke to anyone and kept to herself, maybe ate something, bought a book, and left.

  Most of her hours were spent walking and listening to the forest. There were no neighbors for miles, and that was the way she liked it. If she would meet a stranger walking or hiking on a path, she would vanish in a flash. Jason was right; she had grown fast, faster than she could ever imagine. Faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Is it a bird? Is it a plane…? Oh… it’s just me.

  Often on moonlit nights, she would stare out into her garden wishing for him. If she heard some rustling, her hopes would rise for a second before her abilities could identify the source. Oh, it’s just another critter, she would think, her hopes falling back to despondency. He told me to wait, just wait. But as the years came and went, sometimes she could hear herself thinking, It’s been a long, long time.

  He must be out there, far and distant for sure.

  She would spend a lot of time staring at the stars at night. The sky is so full around here. There are, millions, no, billions of stars up there... is he must be out there on a world circling one? Maybe he is too far to hear my thoughts. Maybe that is why he has not contacted me. I know he would if he could.

  Although she got along fine without the small comforts of life she had once known, she still had, from time to time, an overwhelming need for some “coitus stimulates,” as she used to jokingly call sex with her old, dear, and never-to-be-forgotten friend, Angela. On these occasions, she would get into her VW bug, five years old, red, and with a sunroof. She would drive to some small bar, maybe fifty miles from her house, and find a truck stop. She would park at least a mile away and walk around, making believe she was a hooker. She liked big hairy guys who had been driving for a few days. They smelled like sweaty t-shirts forgotten in a locker room for a week. She would climb into the back of the truck’s cab with them and go to town. She might do three or four men in the course of one night, and she always accepted money so that she did not seem out of the ordinary. This would keep her for at least a month.

  A few times in the bar, she met a woman she liked touching, but there was no one she found really special. There was never anyone she wanted to see again.

  Other than this, Saya had few contacts. She read the thoughts of people and peeked into their minds; hearing distant conversations was enough. Often, she heard herself being described as “the hermit,” or “the strange unfriendly one.”

  Mostly she found being able to read people’s thoughts more than a compensation for relationships. She could be part of people’s lives without ever being involved with them. There was a Post Office clerk whose mother was in a nursing home with cancer and a w
aitress who was always finding one abusive guy after another. These distant intimacies sustained her.

  In the past, when people tried to get close, she would move, but somehow here she was able to stay for a while. Being alone for a time would be a small price to pay for the hope of spending hundreds of years with such a wondrous being as Jason.

  Up near Ithaca she felt accepted, or at least ignored, which was almost as good for now, maybe because there was also a Buddhist retreat nearby and people assumed she was a strange mystic. She thought about going to China or even Japan.

  But if I get on a plane and the same thing happens as did with Angela or even what happened with that photographer guy in the East Village… All those passengers… The thought of being responsible for so many innocent deaths would be unbearable.

  He was so right about these powers; the new ones seem to explain themselves as they come. She accepted most of them without question. Strength, speed, even being able to move things with her mind seemed ordinary; almost like she had always had them but not thought about them. The mind reading was always surprising since she never knew what to expect from people.

  But as time passed, she learned how to listen, or not, and soon it became okay, manageable. Ignore or pry, it all became fun. The nonverbal communication with animals bothered her the most, however. She could hear their breath and sense their feelings. Once she saw a mountain lion while walking, and she let it know that she was not to be messed with. It understood.

  And then there were the stranger things: when it felt as if the whole world talked to her. She could hear the worms crawling under her feet, the bees in their hives, and at times, teeth sinking into flesh. There were the trees as they drew nourishment from the soil and sun, slowly changing, always reaching. Besides the forest, there were the elements: the wind, the rain, the mist, even the atmosphere. They were all communicating, telling her, “I am alive, like you. This planet, this earth, is alive… conscious and alive.” She really did not know how to describe this to anyone, and often thought, maybe this is why I don’t want to talk to people – everything is talking to me