Bold War 2020

by Redemption

  "Beside the pool was a stage on which rested a bright object. Moving closer through the noisy, smelly throng I saw it was a large TV set. Nobody was taking any notice of it, too busy laughing and crying. Walking up the stairs I saw a large sign. As I got closer I read :

  For information

  of value to you

  press me.

  Please!

  with an arrow pointing to a large yellow button, piled with dust as if it hadn't been touched for years, if ever.

  "When I pressed the button the screen filled with red and gold streaks and shooting stars. A knight appeared, in shining armour, on a white horse. Grand in stature, magnificent in countenance, imposing in presence. He frowned at the milling mob, some of whom had noticed the image. They jeered at him between drunken fits. He shouted something at them I couldn't understand and raked his spurs into the horse. From the wounds wings sprouted and the pair flew away.

  "They flew over countryside and oceans and foreign lands, on a long journey, pausing from time to time to pluck a hat from a surprised person, not uttering a word. They floated back and landed on a large rock. The knight upended the contents of five hats into a large cauldron and began stirring. The process mystified me, especially when small lights flickered and traced through the mixture and it swelled like a thick yeast. Were these symbols? Was this a message?

  "As if by a magic process, the knight stepped out of the screen… and it was me! A mining magnate and a white horse! I watched as I walked down the steps and started offering samples of the yeast to the crowd in the beer hall. But they weren't interested, even when I insisted it would do them a power of good. They were too busy laughing - and crying.

  "Finally, I enticed a man, one of the biggest and most brightly dressed, making the most noise, to try a sample. Immediately he ate the yeast he stopped crying and smiled and was happy. His friends were suspicious, until they followed his example and likewise were transformed. Then everybody followed suit, taking directly from the cauldron, and bursting into universal thronging happiness - a result that mystified me, and one that no one could possibly have predicted.

  "And the amazing thing was, even though thousands of people were taking samples from the cauldron, the contents never diminished. It was a dream sequence, which I couldn't understand at the time, but felt I might interpret the message, if there was one, at a later date.

  "A shaft of light from the rising sun of a new day, shining on a new world, fell on the cauldron and I saw a flash reflected from an inscription on its rim. But I was too far away to read what it said, and the milling crowd too dense to get near. A man of Indian countenance turned to me and said, 'What you are trying to see is MMM.'

  "What does that mean?" I asked. "But he didn't answer."

  =

  The screen that Andrew and Christiana are watching turns to black. Andrew takes a deep breath, knowing, but without understanding why, Kent will survive. Briefly he wonders what his own reactions might have been in such a confrontation. What would I have left, or will I now leave to posterity? Quickly he puts aside the uncomfortable line of thinking.

  "He had it pretty bad," he speaks to the ceiling and Christiana. "Not like him to be affected that way. Against his nature and his principles. You're definitely not pulling my leg?"

  Smiling, she shakes her head again as she re-starts the film. "Would I do that?", displaying a small dimple on her right cheek he hadn't noticed before.

  CHAPTER 8 Up and away

  Kent was again pictured, this time swathed in fresh bandages, stirring.

  His voice-over was laboured: "As I revived it was with great thanks and joy. I was alive and given another chance. That was all I asked for and all I felt I needed. I had pulled back from the brink - was this a metaphor? Was the task I had been saved for to pull back the world from the brink? There was intense pain in my head and in my body and aches all over but they were as incidentals against an incredible feeling of lightness, relief, thankfulness and optimism."

  Young Cameron appeared: "Kent, you're going to pull through. Great news. It was touch and go for a while but suddenly you started to come good, as if you had mastered a crisis. Half way through I made a side bet and collected against the odds. Sorry about your eye though."

  "You didn't think I was going to let a car crash or a swarm of bloody bees get the better of me?" he lisped through swollen lips. "And one eye will be enough for the business I have to attend to."

  "Yes, well the team of specialists will report to you in a day or so when you are feeling a bit better."

  "Where are the specialists?"

  "Around the clinic, or not far away, I guess."

  "Cam, I want my report now!"

  "But you aren't…"

  "NOW!" bellowed Kent - in a weak sort of way. "Or, tell them, they won't get paid."

  Ten minutes later the team had assembled. The lead doctor was brusque. "Mr Buchanan, you have been in a serious motor accident and are fortunate to be alive. You have broken bones in your leg, damaged organs and extensive bruising to your body. You have been seriously concussed and have injury to your brain and central nervous system the magnitude of which and the ultimate effect on your lower limbs we have yet to determine. Unfortunately your right eye has been damaged beyond saving. We have programmed extensive tests and will make a detailed prognosis in the near future."

  "What can you tell me right now?"

  "Right now?… Well, we expect as a minimum you will be in the hospital for perhaps six months until we have your basic health restored in some measure. Thereafter, depending on the results of our tests, and unless they give rise to more hope than we currently have, you should prepare yourself for the prospect that your health has been substantially compromised. You will be significantly incapacitated in the future, and may never be able to walk again. Certainly you will be confined to a wheelchair for the foreseeable future."

  Kent paled and said briefly as they departed "Get Xena."

  Left alone with a male nurse Kent burst into prolonged sobbing. The mighty icon of business, commercial dominator, imperious magnate - a broken man, a twisted shadow. The nurse sat impassively until the agony subsided. Kent was irritated that the man had witnessed his time of weakness but relieved he had not fussed over him. As he raised his face to speak Kent was startled, as if with an electric prod. The face near him was identical to the one in his dream, the one who had told him of the cauldron inscription.

  "What's your name?" he snapped, regaining control.

  "Raj Krishna, sir," was the quiet reply.

  "Did you hear that crap they were giving me?"

  "I did sir."

  "It can't be that bad. I'm going to get more opinions, better specialists. I didn't come back from the dead to live in a wheelchair for the rest of my life."

  Glaring at the nurse as if challenging a response, he got one. "Because of your exalted position in industry, sir, I understand you have been advised by some of the foremost experts in their respective fields of western medicine. Therefore most people would believe, in the circumstances, they are accurate in their predictions."

  Rising to the subtle bait Kent asked with faint sarcasm, "Do you know any better?"

  "There can be alternative courses of action, sir. But you are very tired. May I suggest you sleep for the present?"

  Kent needed no further prompting and fell into an exhausted sleep.

  The screen turned to black and then showed Kent ordering Xena to get more opinions and the new specialists giving similar predictions.

  "I was getting nowhere," said Kent to the camera. "Here I had this great urge, more than enough assets and a mind bursting with keenness, but a crippled and useless body racked with pain. A physical shell in hell.

  "I arranged for all Mogul divisions to carry on under their chief executives and report through Xena. Poor Xena, she threw herself into looking after me but for her it was a far different and much less attractive world.

  "I resumed conversations with Raj
Krishna. He had a sympathetic ear and I found it easy to talk and discuss with him. I could not accept there was nothing that could be done to help me, and so, as other avenues of acceptable return to health became exhausted, I asked what he had meant by 'alternative courses of action'."

  "Sir, there are great wisdoms in the East by which many things are possible. All living creatures are part of a higher intelligence, which moves in mysterious ways. I know that recently you have been in that Presence and are frustrated because you are unable to do certain things. I also know that what you want to do needs to be done and I wish to put myself at your disposal."

  "How can you possibly know this?" asked Kent, astonished. "I have told nobody."

  "The mechanism of my knowing is not important, sir. Do you wish me to assist in your endeavours?"

  "Perhaps, but it's important for me to understand what is happening." He tensed as pain consumed the lower part of his body.

  The nurse administered a dose of pain-killing drugs and said: "Does an ant understand mathematics? Or appreciate Beethoven? Mr Buchanan, I repeat: many things are possible. Outcomes can be achieved which do not always have the scientific explanation so cherished by Westerners."

  "On the other hand you Easterners carry on with a lot of mumbo-jumbo and where has it got you? Some of the poorest living standards in the world and nothing to show for it. What could you do for me? Can you show me anything concrete?"

  "I can… On three conditions. That we engage in these activities at a time when we will not be disturbed by hospital staff. That nobody be informed at any stage of what we are doing. And that you make a commitment for a serious effort towards something foreign to your nature."

  Kent was annoyed at finding himself in a corner where he was no longer in control. He didn't like having conditions imposed on him but nodded his assent, submitting himself to a process with an outcome he could not predetermine.

  ~

  Watching the film, and feeling a direct affinity with Kent's physical incapacity, Andrew comments to Christiana: "First time in ages he accepted conditions from anybody. He's changed."

  V

  "Why are you doing this?" asked Kent.

  "All will be revealed in due course. I will proceed in two time frames. One, short term, relates to your pain management. If you achieve in that exercise we will proceed to your overall problem."

  "If I achieve?"

  "Yes, you… sir. I will be guiding. The real responsibility for results will be in your hands or, more accurately, in your head. The drugs I have just administered will start wearing off after three hours. By that time I aim to have you on the way to controlling the pain by your own mental processes."

  Kent's voice-over (KBVO) re-commenced. "It was already after midnight. He got me to lie still, and patiently led me through a series of relaxation exercises. Initially I reacted to them as being too slow, and so subtle that my hyped-up brain scorned them as useless. He persisted, calming me down so that gradually a kind of understanding, totally new to me, developed between my mind and body. My mind was (almost) stilled and my body eased itself into a state where it just about ceased to exist.

  "Then he explained, more clearly and deeply than I thought possible, how my mind and body related to each other, how pain was produced and sensed. He led me into a meditative state where I felt freedom and empowerment at the same time. He told me, and enabled me to tell myself, that the pain would be there, that I would recognise it but that it did not matter, that I had control over it, and I would ignore it.

  "We completed our session two hours later. I felt early signs of returning pain and panic as the drug started to wear off. My efforts to control both were only partially successful, Raj having to give me a half dose, but it was encouraging progress."

  "I will see if I can arrange for you to go on to twenty four hour doses and for me to administer them," said Raj. "That way the clinic will believe you are getting the full dosage while we will know otherwise," with a slight inclination of his head to left and right. "I would like to have you completely off pain-killing drugs in a few days. The side-effects will be eliminated, as will the risk of addiction."

  "The next night we briefly reinforced pain management before Raj asked me how I felt about what was happening. I was full of questions and told him I was impressed. 'Raj, if I hadn't experienced this I wouldn't believe it. Quick, relatively simple, dramatic in result, no external gadgets required.'"

  "Your internal resources are much more powerful than you realise I have merely opened the door to your inner self. This is but a small sample."

  "Then I want more."

  "And you shall, sir, if you really want to."

  "Of course I bloody-well want to. How long has this been going on? Why haven't I known about it? Could others master this as easily and quickly? What would it take to do it? It would be of great value. And when did my hair turn white?"

  "Sir…"

  "For heaven's sake call me Kent."

  "Very well… Kent. Your hair has been white since I have known you these last few days. I expect it happened during your near-death experience."

  "How do you know about my near-death experience?"

  "You have endured a brief but highly traumatic experience. During that time the processes occurring in your body, and particularly your mind, radiated signals. They are obvious to people with training, and I asked to be assigned to your intensive care - without mentioning that aspect to the medical authorities, of course."

  "Of course," replied Kent unsurely. Suddenly he asked "Do the letters MMM mean anything to you?"

  "Why, I suppose they could stand for Mogul Mining and Minerals," replied Raj, almost playfully. "Why do you ask?"

  "No, we never use that terminology," said Kent testily. He looked for the first time directly into the nurse's jet-black eyes and found his mental ground slip from beneath him, leaving the same unaccountable powerlessness of his near-death experience.

  "Regarding your physical progress," Raj said, bringing him back to reality, "there is nothing new in what you have achieved, it has been going on for centuries. It has been available to you or anyone else who might bother to pursue it - through a library or a bookshop or with a yoga practitioner. You weren't aware of these possibilities because your interest was in other more 'important' things. Your need was not great enough for you to investigate. And if you had tried it probably wouldn't have worked, it wouldn't have 'stuck', because of insufficient stimulus to put you in the requisite frame of mind.

  "Whereas in present circumstances you are impelled to focus as much as is necessary to make it work, with the added advantages of a one-to-one relationship with me and personal experience to demonstrate effectiveness. Under the right conditions most people could master this technique without much difficulty. Used on a wider scale, this and other things I can show you will make people healthier and happier and reduce medical, hospital and pharmaceutical costs. There would be great resistance from vested interests of course."

  "Drug companies for one?"

  "Yes. And a mind-change would be needed on the part of individuals and institutions if it were to proceed on a larger scale."

  Tucking away the seed of an idea for the future, Kent made a mental note to have Xena investigate the cost of public health in USA.

  "Kent, as you appear to be pleased with pain management, would you like to take the next step?" asked Raj.

  "My friend, I'm stuck in a wheelchair. I'll take any step. If you can help me walk again I'll be extremely indebted to you. I still can't work out why you're doing this. We are engaging in subterfuge and you're risking your job to help me and you won't say why. Who are you and why are you doing this?"

  "All in good time. I hope if we are to work together there might be a measure of patience and a modicum of trust. From what I have seen of the reports I think your doctors are on the wrong track. If you will allow me to investigate… "

  In the examination that followed Raj moved Kent's limbs into un
familiar positions, exerted pressure at different points and probed his body. He peered into his eyes and prodded the soles of his feet. Kent winced at pains in various parts of his body. As they engaged in earnest conversation Kent's voice-over said; "He told me that as I had achieved pain management, we could approach the next two steps. By the end of the first he could get me on my feet; that would take several days but must be done 'out of hours' while I was in the clinic. The second step to regain full mobility and reasonably good health would take some months and best be done elsewhere.

  =

  "Between medical procedures over the next two days I talked to Raj about my near-death experience and my 'mission' to use my resources to 'change the world for the better'. He empathised with where I was coming from and understood where I wanted to go. When I again asked as to whether he had been in my dream, he deftly turned the subject back to my health and plans for the future.

  "The trouble was I didn't know the nature of what I was going to do, let alone, given my state of debilitation, how I was going to do it. Together, 'out of hours' over the remaining two nights, we worked out a plan of action for my physical progress. Xena came in and I gave her detailed instructions."

  Raj's voice accompanied scenes of yoga, massage and meditation. "From a slow and faltering start Kent made great strides. When he put his mind to this new challenge he excelled. Through body postures and exercises and controlled breathing we began to expedite the mending of his damaged leg, and started to firm his muscles and limber up his joints and spine - in short, to correct and rejuvenate his body. Exercise and control of the constructive power of his mind helped develop his inner strength and channel his new-found positive attitudes into an active foundation that underpinned the inspirations arising from his near-death experience.

  "We launched his appreciation of the interdependence of mind and body. Learning control of his body helped him to master his mind. His prior life had been spent in dominating others. One of the few people in the world he hadn't managed to control was himself - until with my help he began to understand the nature of the one person he was physically closest to, but miles away from knowing.