“And…?”
“And I didn’t find it––as if you needed telling. The old religions teach us how to live. Or how to go to heaven, not how heaven works––as the clerk defending Galileo had put it. There is some overlapping, but that’s only marginal. They tried to teach us how to survive. Since then, of course, the sacerdotal fraternity perverted the teaching into a ‘how to die’ nonsense. Everything has been changed into the after-death type of philosophy, as if any single one of them had any idea about whatever happens after death. Anyway, they never explained if they were talking about the physical, emotional or mental death, but judging by the way they amassed gold in this life, they certainly learned how to live happily in the here-and-now.”
There was neither passion nor rancour in Desmond’s voice. He simply stated the truth as he knew it. He even sounded as though he felt sorry for the ‘sacerdotal fraternity’ for having lost all meaning of life. Certainly, it seemed, neither he nor the said fraternity appeared to have found the ‘thoughts of God’. Not in the ancient scriptures.
“So,” he continued after a little while, “I started looking elsewhere.” He looked into Alec’s eyes. “And, lad, as you can well see, I’m still looking.”
They never touched on the subject again. While they talked, Suzy was preparing dinner. She prepared it—the men cleaned up afterwards. Des and Matt. They also laid out the table and served the drinks and wine. As Suzy ventured from the kitchen to the living room, to the corner where the dining table was laid out, she lingered longer then usual. Alec suspected she didn’t quite like what she’d heard, but she didn’t have sufficient arguments to oppose the Professor.
“Especially after the necklace...” he thought. “It simply wouldn’t be nice...”
But, Suzy reconciled herself that Desmond’s words rang true. He didn’t condemn, he simply confessed that what he was looking for lay elsewhere. The divine thoughts he wanted to hear were not recorded in the same books. There, God talked on other subjects, the essence of which the Professor was practicing all his life. There was no need to dwell on them any more. It was simply the right way to live. Right belief, right resolve, right speech, conduct, occupation, effort, right contemplation and right ecstasy. The eight-fold path of Buddha. Why were these guidelines so difficult for the western man to adopt? Then she smiled at her own thoughts. The East, frankly, was not doing so much better, she’d conceded.
“More cheese, Des?”
The dinner was running to its satisfying close. The Camembert was just right, the Roquefort also, and the red Burgundy complemented both perfectly. Next came coffee, and then, as was their custom, a brisk walk around the block. In the days when Alec still walked, this was the only time they left Sacha asleep in his jungle unattended. The walk took just under fifteen minutes. Sometimes either Alec or Suzy would get back to Sacha, while the remaining two would make another round. By ten the streets were fairly empty, the stroll cleared their lungs before retiring. Ever assuming there wasn’t a smog warning posted.
Neither Alec nor Suzy knew, nor would they have guessed, that this would be the last time they’d be enjoying a pleasant dinner-for-three with the Professor. No, it wasn’t because Sacha was ready to join them at the table. Not yet. Yet the custom they’d grown to enjoy so much had run its course.
Last night, Alec had, once again, some unpleasant chimerical flashes. Each time he dozed off, he had wakened almost immediately with a feeling of profound distaste. Only short snippets of the dreams came to him, as though the past had been presented to him in tiny fragments torn out of the fabric of time. Each segment lasted no more than a few seconds, two or three minutes at most––of real time, that is. Thankfully the ordeal, if one could call it that, did not last too long. After about a half-hour he finally succumbed to a relaxing, uninterrupted sleep.
The following morning he felt a lingering nausea similar to that which he carried with him for a week after the original horror he’d ‘witnessed’, during his nightmare of the Dark Ages. These new snippets had not been as intense, nor as cruel nor horrifying as that first nightmare, but they did seem to make a statement that human kind had a tremendous propensity for inflicting pain. Alec wondered, as he had after each such dream, what was the purpose of his subconscious torturing him on such a regular schedule. There were no obvious answers. When he’d talked to Suzy, she was as stumped as he was. In spite of her almost inerrant intuition, she’d drawn a blank.
“But there is always a reason, for everything,” he insisted.
“But the reason may well be buried deep in your own subconscious,” she’d replied. “It may be accessible only to you and no one else, don’t you agree?”
He had to agree. From the time he was a little boy, he’d experienced dreams that did not seem to trouble anyone else he’d ever met. Neither then nor now. Was it his early evolution, his willingness to escape into the chimerical world of daydreams for which he was now paying? Or was there a more sinister reason?
He still hoped that somewhere, somehow, the secret of a cure for his paralysis lay in those enigmatic visions. He dissected them with the precision of a seasoned surgeon. All to no avail. More and more often he felt that his time was running out.
As was usual in such circumstances, he threw himself into his work. He lectured, conducted experiments, wrote articles—kept as busy as is humanly possible. At the very least he was determined to hold on to his mind. The rest of the time he played with Sacha. He asked Matt to take his son for walks, while he, when no longer propelling himself with his arms, buzzed along on his motorized chair. This gave Suzy a chance to do some painting. By the evening Alec was so tired that he slept peacefully, unhampered by any sadistic demons. It was then that he’d promised himself that should he ever venture into the world of dreams again, he would do everything in his power to bypass any and all Dark Ages. However dark the past, he’d turn his face and his mind only towards the future. In the evening, he remained in his wheelchair for as long as possible, to stay awake as long as he could.
It worked for a while.
Yet, apparently, there was one more lesson he had to endure. Luckily the prologue to the main event, as he’d recounted it later to Suzy, was almost free from satanic connotations. It had taken him into the land as ancient as to be completely unrecognizable. It might have been on another planet.
The sand stretched in all directions as far as the horizon. From his vantage point, he could see the undulating pattern of dunes, and its mirror image only much darker, no more than a dozen feet above his head. He arrived there after yet another, though mercifully short, series of flashes through the cycles of human depravity, which apparently formed deep scars on the sequential order of human evolution. These scars had occurred, it seemed, throughout history––probably prehistory. There had been the countless tribe leaders wielding both absolute and uncompromising power over their more ignorant subjects, the underground societies, which had terrorized men and women for many decades at a time, only to be reborn elsewhere and elsewhen to continue their demonic cults. He was then shown the horrors of primitive religions so similar to the original cults yet whose crimes had been committed in the name of One who was not there to deny them or to defend Himself. The One invariably battled for supremacy with other ‘Ones’—the births pangs of monotheism.
And after these and many other depravities, he’d been thrown into a virtual stasis. Not the stasis he’d experienced in the no-space-no-time zone, but a reality that was suspended halfway between physical and nonphysical mode of existence.
He has been placed in bodies of men, if men they were, in different parts of the Kingdom of Mu, the name that was firmly etched on his mind, though it had nothing to do with what Augustus Le Plongeon described the sunken continent. This had nothing to do with anything that made any sense…
This time, Alec was more an observer than an active participant in... in whatever the inhabitants of the Kingdom did. It seemed to have been very little, until he saw that the activi
ty was not really connected to or dependent on the body he’d occupied. The body was no more than a suit of clothing, having little or no will of its own. If he had not enlivened it with his presence, it would have remained in a state of rest. A stasis.
It would have remained in abeyance.
When he found himself placed, progressively, in the third ‘body’, he attempted to look through its eyes.
He was standing on top of a low dune; its surface slightly undulated, as the top of an ocean swell would be in a gentle breeze. Indeed, he was in an ocean of sorts. It was an ocean of sand. As far as the eyes could see. Above him was an equally endless and equally undulating ceiling, perhaps of thick cloud, almost water, so heavy as to barely rise above the sand.
The body that served him was equipped with very good eyes. He could zoom in on the grains at his feet, for the flat portions at the end of his stumps must have been feet. They seemed more suited to standing than moving. Apparently there was no need to develop more functional feet. Legs for that matter. He moved by willing to be in another body and immediately he was elsewhere. He realized, immediately, that his host body remained in the same place. What moved was his awareness. His point of view. Only there seemed little point to this exercise. For wherever he transported himself, seemingly by magic, the environment was identical to the one he’d just left.
What could have been the point of it all?
And then he saw another pod on similar stumpy supports looking at him. At least its eyes were directed in his direction. He zoomed in on those eyes and he saw nothing. An emptiness that can be seen in the eyes of a man in a coma. Perhaps these pods, these people, were not awakened yet.
He had no idea into what life they would come into. There seemed to be no life here, as yet. As yet? Was life here yet to evolve? Was this the beginning?
He looked at his foot-pads and imagined a plant.
Nothing happened. The sand remained dry, useless, undisturbed. He looked around, his eyes swiveling a full circle, and faced once more that other pod standing some two hundred feet from him atop another dune. The other pod had remained completely static. Dead? Yet… Even from this distance he saw that the pod was staring at his own feet. He looked down himself. And there, a single stem was moving upwards, winding itself around one of his stumps. Instinctively he jerked his ‘leg’ to free it. The little stem hovered and fell back on the sand. It was dead.
Alec, for he still thought of himself as Alec, felt a strange sadness.
“I could have let it live,” he thought. “I didn’t need this body.”
He tried to imagine the plant again, but this time, even after waiting a long time, nothing happened. He’d lost his chance. The plants wouldn’t trust him again. Not to be born, not to live. Pain constricted his heart. He felt great remorse.
After a long while he looked up from his luckless stumps. The pod on the other dune was still there. It looked different. Very different. He zoomed in on it. From head to toe it was covered in a mesh of winding, interlocking vines. And in some places, tiny, extremely tiny leaves were just breaking out from their buds.
And then there was only darkness.
It was night when he awakened. Still in his chair. Matt never interfered with his wishes; unless they threatened his physical wellbeing. He would not put him to bed against his will.
For a long while Alec couldn’t figure out the purpose of this dream. An exercise in fear and stupidity? Or just a lesson in the force of destiny…
There could be so many answers to so many questions.
Next day Alec was back at work. He was busy putting together preliminary proposal for the elusive, the improbable, virtually impossible, Unified Field Theory. A theory that would, with a single equation or a series of equations, unify all the physical laws and forces and show their interrelationship to each other. The Information Theory was the key. The rest was just hard work. Finally the force of gravity would ‘join hands’ with the other universal forces.
But each day, the moment he got home, the Kingdom of Mu kept returning to the forefront of his awareness. The same questions, the same enigma. Why all this sand? Why no water? How can anyone survive without water? Why would they want to?
And, worst of all, who made, or built, or created those pods? There was no other life there. None at all. Just pods. Skins waiting to be filled with life? They seemed inanimate until Alec showed the other man, the occupier of the other pod, how to make a plant grow. And later, how to destroy it…
The following day, while thinking of something quite different, Alec caught his breath. His thoughts continued to come back to that single concept of fear. Was that the beginning of all evil? That single unthinking, irrational reaction of fear? The only thing you must fear is fear itself, he remembered. Was that what it was all about? Could it be that the previous snippets of history, each and every one of them, had their origin in fear? Was this why man killed, tortured, debased himself?
He recalled the anguish he’d felt when the plant he’d just created wilted and died at his feet. It was his heart that had failed him. The heart that had been short on courage. On rational action. On being more human?
What does it mean, really, to be human?
He wondered what the Kingdom of Mu looked like today. There must have been thousands upon thousands of pods covered with plants. Perhaps forests. And maybe they would learn to grow new pods, and make them mobile, like men. Perhaps the pods and the plants could coexist in harmony––or would it have been seeded with the germ of fear.
Alec pressed a button and the wheelchair rolled silently towards the window. And as he looked out onto the cityscape below, he knew. He knew exactly what the Kingdom of Mu looked like today.
And yet, he still missed the most important lesson of the Kingdom of Mu.
***
The Return
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Henry David Thoreau
1817 – 1862
Author, Naturalist, and Philosopher
19
Sacha and other Youngsters
When it happened, it happened quite suddenly. One moment Sacha was playing on a rug in the middle of the living room, the next instant he was a foot to the left. Suzy swallowed hard, picked him up, inspected him from all sides, held him protectively for a while and, finally, though with a vague reluctance, put him back on the floor.
Sacha was no longer willing to remain in his playpen. He could be induced to stay there for a short time, as when lured there by a new toy, but that was about it. The rest of the time he roamed wherever a physical barrier would not impede his progress. Desmond called him a tourist. Who knows where else he went when he shifted, Suzy thought, her heart beating a little faster.
“He did it,” she told Alec the moment he got back from the Institute. And before he could ask ‘What?’ she told him. “Sacha peek-a-boo’ed.”
Alec smiled. “Darling, Sue...”
“He peek-a-boo’ed, today, right on the carpet,” she insisted.
“Well, did you clean up after...”
“And it’s all your fault!” she added.
He had to dodge her slipper aimed with great precision at his head. His wheelchair no longer afforded protection. He’d have to watch his step, so to speak.
“All right, so he peek-a-boo’ed,” he acceded. According to you I’ve done it dozens of times and I am whole and hale. Perhaps it’s the most natural thing to do, only no one’s ever noticed such things before. For all I know, you do it all the time. Perhaps we all do it…”
“What!!!” She was removing her left slipper.
“Just kidding,” he assured, but made a precautionary dodge behind the table.
Only Alec wasn’t whole and hale. When Sue quieted down, his mind returned to his last excursion. He’d moved from pod to pod without legs, he was virtually independent of the pod he inhabited, through which he’d acted. And it still had been in his power to do ‘good and evil’. We are not our bodies, he
affirmed firmly. After millions of years of evolution we’ve learned to identify ourselves with our physical envelopes. But... but we are not... We are what we seem to be.
“You don’t believe me!” Suzy sounded as angry as she was sad. This was about Sacha, again.
And the next moment, without the slightest warning she stooped over the wheelchair, threw her arms around Alec’s neck. Her head jerked with uncontrollable sobs. He wondered, incongruously, how would he feel if she really would peek-a-boo now and then. Would he be as worried? He stroked her golden hair.
“It’s all right, Sue. Everything’s always exactly as it should be.” He had no idea why he’d chosen these particular words of reassurance. Perhaps they’d worked the last time. Apparently he was right. Suzy was a great believer in Divine Providence.
“Nothing bad could happen to him, could it?”
“Of course not. You know that?”
“Yes. I know that. But....”
Five minutes later she was calm. It was being alone and having to witness her son following his father into the unknown, where she had absolutely no access, that bothered her most of all. Long before Sacha had shifted positions she’d resented that she couldn’t join Alec on his wild escapades. She didn’t care if they were real or not; she wanted to be with him. Always. At all times. Forever.
“Everything’s always exactly as it should be,” Alec murmured under his breath. Had Suzy looked, she would have seen a light come into his eyes that had been missing for quite a while.
For now, Sacha remained perfectly ‘normal’. Other than trying to break down the structural stability of most pieces of furniture with whatever he could get hold of, he was a perfectly normal child. Perhaps they’d both imagined that he ‘appeared’ to them in certain circumstances. Why not? There were great many things they’d imagined. Suzy imagined her innumerable paintings, Alec––the invisible particles integrating themselves into a predictable mathematical patterns. Both creative endeavours were neither more nor less demanding on their imaginative faculties than visualizing father’s attributes in his son, or feeling his presence when in need of such.
Alexander: [Alexander Trilogy Book Two] Page 24