I suddenly remembered – where were the folks? I turned my head from side to side looking for them. My tandem partner must have understood, tapping me on the shoulder and pointing down below. That had to be Mom. She had exited first, and even at that distance between us, I knew it must be her. How she had managed to find a pink jumpsuit in the pile we were shown to select from I cannot understand. But then I was not surprised by her much anymore. I glanced back at the cameraman, who was gesticulating and pointing down and to my right. There was my dad; he and his tandem partner had a head-down attitude and were streaking away below us as a consequence of their now higher speed. They were behaving a little like snowboarders, darting this way and that. OK, so he had done two solo static-line jumps years ago. That was no reason to show off. But to be quite honest, I was happy with my slower, stable fall to earth and felt we were in control. At least that was what I told myself.
Speaking of speed, it was becoming quite clear that we were travelling really fast; the surface detail was beginning to crystallise into buildings, vehicles, and people. People! I could see people! How close are we, dammit? I wondered. I saw my dad’s chute was open; he was almost on the ground, and Mom was already down. When are we going to—? The jerk was sudden and surprisingly brutal. I suppose two people create a fair weight to be stopped by the chute deployment. But I would happily take ‘brutal’ if it meant landing gently as planned rather than on my face at any speed. John, the chap I jumped with, took us on a few wide swirls and sweeps on the way down – quite enjoyable actually but nerve-racking at the same time. I was surprised by the apparent speed of decent as the ground rush began. John had explained this phenomenon, and I could see now why he had said it prompted many novices to activate the air breaks too soon, causing a stall and rapid fall to ground, which often resulted in broken ankles or legs. I still thought he was leaving it until too late, but when he flared, he got the timing just right. ‘Legs up! Higher!’ I remember his call just before landing. We landed softly and easily, and in two or three metres of skidding along on our backsides, we were down and stopped.
Dad was grinning stupidly at me as he hurried past to where Mom was waiting. I am sure he was worried about her Achilles tendon, which had taken two years to heal sufficiently after an earlier injury. I had seen him talking quietly to Charles, my mom’s tandem partner, while still on the ground. He had pointed to his ankle, and Charles had nodded. I had been a little concerned because Charles was a rather small, frail-looking lad. As it turned out, his lack of body mass was just what was required. Between the two of them, they weighed somewhat less than the maximum carrying capacity of the chute, and Charles had put them down light as a feather. The lack of wind had made for easy landings, with the chutes simply collapsing behind us.
I had not realised John had unclipped me while I was watching my folks. As I came loose, I naturally shuffled a pace or two away on my backside and tried to stand up. He was an old hand at this and caught me by the arm as I stumbled. My knees were weak! John explained that it happened as a consequence of the nervous rush and adrenalin, but it would pass quickly once we walked a few paces. He was right, no problem, but Mom still had her wobble it seemed, and she was hanging on to Dad lightly as she walked to the benches.
Getting those ‘well-fitting’ jumpsuits off proved harder than expected. You needed help, and we had to assist each other. We were offered soft drinks while we waited for the DVD and the photographs. Francois, the Afrikaans lad who did this to earn pocket money for varsity, and of course get free jumps, took about fifteen minutes, and then he called us to run briefly through the DVD so we could see if it was alright. It actually looked scarier from the camera perspective, possibly due to the narrower field of view.
On our way to the car, my knees still felt a little wobbly. I suppose I needed to accept that jumping out of a plane was not something I was used to doing. The trip home was uneventful, other than Dad insisting that a celebration consisting of waffles or pancakes was called for. Who was I to argue with such a sensible and wise decision?
Even before I got home, my friends began calling, and I had no choice but to invite them over to view the DVD. It was a lot of fun though, and together we chose the snippets I would use in the screen show of my life at my twenty-first birthday party to be held the following weekend.I outlined the above story because it explains how normal our lives appeared. It also gives an indication of what my parents were willing to do. I had never come across anyone whose parents did something as outrageous as this at their age, let alone when they were younger. What they had done that day was obviously uncommon, and they had given me a different perspective, or view, of the planet we lived on, from the outside of a plane. Over my life leading up to this point, my father had taken great delight in explaining to me how things worked, how to use tools and work on electric plugs, and so on. He also spent many hours with me discussing the smokescreens out there, teaching me to look behind the obvious, to not simply accept the explanations or rhetoric from the leaders of our civilization. He also explained that Gaia, our planet, was a living energy organism, and mankind was now behaving like a virus that had got out of control. Like any living organism, once a virus transgressed a certain boundary, the organism would begin to defend itself. He felt strongly that Gaia was going to take action to recover her health.
Our discussions had become more focused as the idea of the end of the Mayan calendar, 21 December 2012, was being touted by the media as a doomsday scenario. My father tried to ease my concern a little, saying that he did not believe it was so time specific. What was happening was that we were entering a period of change, and it was being confirmed with increasing activity from earthquakes tsunamis, violent storms, changing weather patterns, etc. These, he felt, were going to get worse but did not necessarily indicate that the end of the world was nigh, although there were possibilities of something occurring that would drastically change how we lived. I believe he felt he was trying to calm me down, trying to remove some of the sting of what was becoming quite a media and film hype. At the same time, he was trying not to hide anything from me. I suppose there simply was no way not to be factual and describe possible occurrences without creating some nervousness.
One scenario he explained scared me in the potential suddenness of its impact should it occur. No, it was not a meteorite or something similar, although that was frightening in itself. He was referring to our melting ice caps, noticeably Greenland, and the land-based ice in Antarctica, which on its own accounted for over half the fresh water on the planet. Apart from the potential catastrophe should one of these slip into the ocean, his concern was that the world population had become too dependent on others to provide their needs. The use of money, to purchase from stores, had made us dependent on other areas of our own countries, and of the world, for virtually everything. We specifically depended in most part on imports for our energy needs, part of our food supply, and other vital equipment. This meant sea freight was critical to the world survival as we currently knew it.
I remember quite clearly, during a pause in this discussion, asking why this was such a problem. ‘Global warming’, he said, ‘has begun to melt these ice caps. In itself, that is a slow problem that will cause damage and trouble but could probably be managed. These caps, however, are losing millions of tons of ice to melt water, water which is finding its way to the bottom of these immensely thick ice slabs. This water is acting as a lubricant, loosening the grip of the ice on the land beneath. Ice along the shorelines, which also acts as a brake on the land-based ice shelf and assists to hold it in place, has melted, and for the most part is no longer there.’
The problem then, according to my dad, was that if one of these two ice caps – ice shelves, call them what you will – suddenly slipped into the sea, there would be a catastrophe. Not only would the sea rise many meters, virtually in a day or two, but the speed of the slippage and immense mass of the ice could create a tidal wave of
unimaginable proportions which would circumnavigate the earth for days, possibly weeks. This tidal wave would make the tsunamis experienced to date look like waves in a kiddie pool by comparison. Not only would seaports now be under water, probably the vast majority of the ships would be on the sea floor. People living on or close to shorelines, or even many kilometres away but on low-lying land masses, if not initially wiped out by the tidal wave, sadly would now be homeless, with no food sources and probably a lack of clean water. As the majority of the earth’s population lived close to the shores and only meters above sea level, the instantaneous destructive effect on the human population would be unimaginable.
‘This catastrophe has occurred before,’ my dad explained. ‘According to Zecharia Sitchin, and described in his book series The Earth Chronicles3 which he compiled from deciphering a large number of clay tablets unearthed during geological excavations from many sites in the world, this was the deluge described in the Bible and other ancient texts. The timing attributed by the various sources, be they the Bible, the clay tablets, or other documents, is similar enough to be referring to the same event. The disaster described then was of a scale we would probably expect to see if slippage of such a vast piece of ice was to occur. People inland, although not directly nor immediately affected by the incident, would soon begin to panic, and within a day or two, every food shop would be ransacked, with people attacking and probably killing each other for food stores. Power and water services would shut down within hours as the people who worked at these facilities panicked and went home to fend for their families. It would become a free for all, with people intent only on their own survival. It would be the end, and a very quick end, to our civilization as we know it.’
Although he was just painting a possible scenario, and stressed that it might not happen in our lifetimes, it scared me immensely in its simplicity and possible scale of destruction. I struggled with this for days, seeing all my life plans going down the drain. What was the point then, I wondered. But Dad covered this aspect of my thought train when he said that we had to live as if all would be all right. We cannot live in constant fear of the worst as living that way would be tantamount to a living death. We were spiritual beings having a physical experience on earth, so in the end, it would only be our physical bodies which could be affected. This explanation gave me a small measure of comfort, but it was still scary, and I noticed that my dad continued with the process of obtaining his place in the country.
Chapter 3
My day off began with an absolutely gorgeous morning. We generally conserved our lamp oil resources, being mindful not to waste and this, along with the cooler evenings, had resulted in my retiring to bed early the previous evening. I awoke with the sun, a habit engendered in me by my father all those years ago. I was astounded at how our lives before the Fall had so consumed us that we would not make time to witness the daily wonder and beauty of the sunrise. Sitting under the tree, on a rudimentary stool made for me by one of the young lads of the community over two years ago, I pulled the rough wool blanket closer over my shoulders and simply enjoyed the rising warmth in my old body as the sun clawed its way up out of the horizon. I now understood the behaviour of the animals, insects, and birds which all simply enjoyed this moment each day. Although I had seen this in my early years, like almost everyone, I had completely missed really seeing it, of experiencing it, simply being too busy and having considered it unimportant relative to the other issues in my life. Too busy! How the system had corrupted and controlled us.
With my eyes closed, and the red hue behind my eyelids vibrant from the sunlight coming through them, I remembered my dad telling me the story about the slavery of mankind, which he had read in one of the Ringing Cedar44 series of books. The story, he had said, felt ‘comfortable in his gut’ and fitted his own perception of the world system then in place.
Even though it may not have occurred exactly like this, the story fitted what my dad intuitively felt had taken place at some time. I will summarise it here, as best as I can recall it, although we do have the books in our simple library. (How that occurred, I will explain later). The story is as follows:
At some point in our past, a high priest, the behind-the-scenes controller of the ruler of that kingdom at the time, felt that the amount of time, resources, and energy spent on controlling the slaves was excessive. Their discontent and scheming to revolt was a constant pain in his side. He decided to observe the situation, to divorce himself for a while from his normal duties, and to search for a solution. He spent many weeks simply observing them, allowing his mind to ponder the question of how to improve the situation – from his perspective in any event. He even went so far as to disguise himself as a slave to work and sleep amongst them and talk to them to see what he could find out. He found that they were unhappy and were indeed planning a revolt. Typical, he thought.
Back in his normal role, he again sat, watched, and thought about the problem. When he felt he had a solution, he called his senior priests together and explained his plan. ‘Genius,’ they exclaimed, ‘what a remarkable solution. It will control the slaves without them being aware of it.’ Taking his plan to the ruler, the ruler was initially anxious but the high priest carefully explained that the guards would still be there if it went wrong, even though he was convinced it would not. If the idea did work, he explained, the guards could be removed from slave guard duty and used in campaigns against other nations to expand their control, or in defence of their own kingdom, making them much stronger and more stable. The ruler finally agreed, and so it was explained to the slaves.
‘As from tomorrow,’ the priest told the gathered slaves, holding up a small, flat, round piece of metal, ‘you will be given one coin for every acceptable stone block brought from the quarry. You will be able to exchange the coins you earn for other goods, such as food, clothing, a house, and so on. There is no limit to the amount of coins you may earn. As from tomorrow, you will be free men in charge of your own destiny.’
That night the slaves barely slept. There was much discussion about the system and most were naturally sceptical. That morning the guards did not wake them as usual before daylight, but the normal breakfast routine was active. At first light, a few decided to test the priest’s words and arrived at the work site with their stone blocks. Sure enough, they were handed their coins. The better stones got a bigger reward. These slaves ran back, passing on the news and showing off their coins. By the end of a few days, previous slow-moving, reticent slaves were working themselves to a standstill daily, exceeding many fold their previous performance. Some had organized teams, improving their performance further. Others began to set up supplies of food, water, and tools, and so it went on.
‘Absolutely brilliant,’ the ruler told the high priest some weeks later. ‘No one in the world can touch us now. We have the most efficient slaves in the world, and they look after themselves, pay for their own upkeep, and need no guarding. I can now concentrate on more important issues, such as expanding our areas of control.’
My father added the following to the story, as he felt it was also part of the whole slavery issue. ‘The rulers, under this situation, would also have had fewer problems in conscripting for their army, as these slaves thought they now owned something and would be more willing to die protecting it. In essence though, they did not really own anything as the rulers still had right over all. In the modern times, this was made more so by the introduction of credit, by the provision of money that did not actually exist, but on which interest had to be paid, prolonging the repayments and making it extremely difficult for anyone to own anything, especially housing and land. The continued provision of credit, the imposition of tax on everything, and the regular financial crises kept everyone so preoccupied with trying to pay off their debts that they were forced to remain slaves their whole lives.’
All this was under the guise of our so-called freedom. ‘How can this be called freedom?’
my dad would say. ‘Freedom, by definition, denotes choice from a number of options. There are no alternatives to the system. If one tried to get out of the system, then one found that the system made it almost impossible to do so. One would virtually have to exclude oneself fully from society, and society would ensure you were branded in such a way that no one would wish to be like you. What freedom! Even the politicians we vote for democratically are provided to us to choose from. There is no freedom in our world system – it is all controlled by a few, and the rest are slaves to a fiendishly clever system of total control.’
My dad was adamant about this, but he had to tread carefully. ‘Few people are willing to talk about this,’ my dad said, ‘as it would mean admitting to having been conned by the system, knowing that they were not doing anything about it – and having to live with that knowledge of remaining within the con and being too weak to get out.’
This whole slave idea of my dad’s was based upon a number of diverse sources of information. According to him, science had a disconnect in the gradual development of man. There was a sudden change in mankind’s physical development which scientists were at a loss to explain, along with a number of step changes in mankind’s abilities and skills, one example of which was the sudden entry into domesticated farm animals and crop farming. A compelling explanation, again from the deciphering of unearthed clay tablets by Zecharia Sitchin5, was that the step change in the physiology of man was due to genetic engineering by an extra-terrestrial race that had populated the earth to obtain gold for their own use. Many of man’s current fixations, such as gold, power, control of the masses, war, and the like could be directly traced back to the actions of these extra-terrestrials, which man saw as gods due to their abilities versus our own.
0.0.0.0 Would Our Legacy Survive? Page 3