“My name is Otho in your tongue, and I was once held captive by the Nessians along the Great River flowing into the Inland Sea. It is there I learned Latin and passable Aramaic.”
“How so? Rome has no outpost there. And neither Latin nor Aramaic are their tongues.”
Caesar was suspicious but wanted to question the man more. He needed better intelligence on the Germanic tribe encamped a mere one hundred leagues distant. The Germans were brave, indeed fierce, but to Caesar, somewhat rash and intemperate. They were also clever, and cunning for a rather brutish race; they had destroyed several legions in ambush, luring them to disaster not so long ago. The Roman generals in that campaign had lost standards; it was a dishonor to Rome and not soon forgotten.
Although the Gensarii scouts were excellent, they had no written language, and mapmaking wasn’t among their many natural skills. But their courage and stealth were second to none, and when they did return from a scouting mission, their intelligence was accurate and precise. Caesar would deploy his Gensarii if the man’s knowledge proved useless or deceptive; captives lying about information and knowledge was quite common. What had they to lose? A short and cruel life in the mines awaited the men; the brothels and domestic slavery awaited the women and children.
Otho continued, “My father and I arrived at the principal city in the region, governed by a local satrap, and discovered a Roman praetor in residence. He was visiting to assess the danger from marauding tribes raiding from the east. The small kingdom was an ally of Rome, paid a rather heavy annual tribute, and was protected by their treaty rights with Rome. If required, the praetor would marshal his forces some fifty leagues away in the capital city of another kingdom and return to resolve matters with the marauders. My father and I were guests for more than a year; but later we were detained.”
“How so?” Caesar was suspicious of this fellow.
“The praetor accused my father and I of being spies, seized our goods and confined us to the city. When he left, having convinced the marauders to raid elsewhere rather than incur the wrath of Rome, we were freed.”
“I see. Pray tell, what was the praetor’s name?”
“Marcus Lucius Drusus, a man of quality from an old Roman family I was told.”
“He was indeed.”
“Was?”
“Died in a campaign in Hispania a few years back. A thief, a liar, a coward and an extortionist of first quality. But his bloodlines were impeccable.”
Otho said nothing, watching both Caesar, and Gaius Livius Tarsus. Caesar had a reputation as a great military tactician, but he was also a ruthless psychopath when crossed by his enemies. Slaughtering innocent captives wasn’t a problem for Caesar. Captives had to earn life; otherwise they were just a burden that had to be fed.
Caesar had more important things to consider at the moment, so he left this Otho fellow to Gaius Livius Tarsus to drain of knowledge and determine whether his continued existence was merited.
In the end, it was.
Othos’s intelligence was excellent, his stealth more than adequate, and his mapmaking skills both accurate and useful.
Caesar won the campaign against the second tribe, due in part to excellent intelligence on the terrain and the map provided to Caesar by Otho and verified by Gaius Livius Tarsus. He then crossed the Rhine and campaigned there as a warning to the Germans to stay put on their side of the river. Gaul was, or soon would be, Roman.
The Alveti were taken back to Italy as a prize of the campaign and given to the Gens, who mysteriously didn’t sell them into slavery. They eventually settled near the homeland of the Gens and became indentured to them instead. Over time, the Alveti proved useful to the Gens military and so gained their freedom. They were permitted to keep their customs and language, even their pagan religion.
Over the centuries that followed, the Alveti morphed from skilled servants of the Gens into a warrior class dedicated solely, and exclusively to the leadership of the transformed Gens Collective in the Roman Empire.
By the end of the Roman era, and into the Middle Ages, the Alveti lost their identity as a distinct cultural group and were disbursed around the world along with their Gens masters. As they disbursed, they intermarried into the local cultures, but remained dedicated to the Collective, and had only one occupation: to serve the transformed Gens elite.
The men and women of Alveti ancestry served the Collective in martial capacities, and their allegiance was absolute. Though vicious killers and assassins, they weren’t thugs driven by brute force. They had been trained by the Gens in ancient lethal practices from around the world, from secret societies to nameless cults. They were skilled in stealth, and infiltration and, when most effective, their prey was dead, and their presence never detected. When assigned to discover and eliminate targets of the Collective, teams, both male and female, employed many lethal tools.
In the modern era, every ploy, and artifice was employed and mixed gender death squads roamed the planet carrying out assignments, most of which were for the Collective, but others of which were independent assignments arranged by the Collective on a contract basis.
To the Gens elite they were formally known the Alveti Hunters, although they were known more commonly by transformed Gens only as the Hunters.
***
The Hunters hadn’t been tasked with tracking the Human, and the reason was plain. The Hunters, still to this day, had no idea who or what the Gens were. In the more than two thousand years of service, they had always served the Gens in human form. That their masters might not be human was a fact that the Hunters had never contemplated. After all, why would they?
The leadership of the contemporary Gens Collective had no desire to put the Hunters in contact with the Human and his people. That could risk discovery, and that could be a disaster. It could change the dynamic of a successful symbiotic relationship lasting well over two millennia. The Collective still needed their human pets and wouldn’t set them after the Human unless it was as a last resort.
***
Saldana Ri had thought things out carefully, planning contingencies for every possible starting point, and what actions were to be taken. In her own way, she was a genius.
She had a new plan in mind, and it would infuriate the Human. In its aftermath, nothing Paulo could say to the Human would be believed by him. Then the leadership of the Collective would have no choice, but to join her righteous cause.
War with the humans was now rapidly becoming inevitable, she believed. She had the means to destroy them, but there was just one drawback. Many in the Collective would die too. She knew why, something discovered by her sister, and known only to a very few who had every reason to keep it secret.
Those casualties would be unfortunate collateral damage and none of her concern. Besides, to her fellow fundamentalists, they were no longer pure. They needed to go along with the rest of the human vermin.
Chapter 22
When Adam was eight years old, and still struggling mightily with controlling his mental gifts, he asked his confessor to help him understand God’s plan for him. The Jesuit priest, Father Rodriguez, set out to do just that. On one Sunday, following Mass and Confession, the Priest asked him to meet him in the Rectory gardens.
He had news.
Adam eagerly walked to the Rectory, and found his friend seated beneath a great tree, its branches spreading in every direction, shading the ground and sidewalk below.
“How are you today, my son?” asked the Priest. “Is the disquiet still present?”
“It is Father. It burdens me day and night; it never ceases its assault on my mind. But I’m no worse. Except for sleep and that’s a luxury I seldom enjoy any longer. It causes anxiety and hot temper. I wish neither.”
The Priest, thirty years the boy’s senior, was always amazed at the conversations he had with young Adam St. James. Had he closed his eyes, ignored the high pitch voice of an eight-year-old boy, he would have guessed he was speakin
g to a man his own age. His clarity of expression, his mastery of the English language, and his sophistication of thought were gifts from God. But gifts, the Priest believed, given too early and to one not yet ready to master them.
This boy’s life would be a struggle; he hoped the child would reach adulthood with his mind intact. If God had plans for this soul, he would also show him the path to control these great gifts. Perhaps that’s why God directed young Adam to him, allowing God’s will to be carried out.
“I have cast my net far and wide, and well beyond the reach of the Church. It is my belief that God’s will is for you to remain whole, so you may carry out His plan for you on this earth.”
“It is my wish too, Father.”
“I have a name for you. A man I have found in India, a man not of our faith, but a man of great spirituality and wisdom. He is Hindu with the mental, physical and emotional discipline of the Buddha, whose philosophy he also follows.”
“Is he of God?”
“He is. And he is of man, as are you. He suffers … I should rather say, he possesses the same gift as you, but received spiritual training from a much earlier age. He has mastery over his great gift and is willing to help you master yours. Come, we have only minutes to spare before we call him. Where he lives, there are few phones, and he must be near one of them when we call. Come. Quickly now.”
Adam and the Priest called Sanjay Kundit Kumar, and Adam began a dialog by phone and later by primitive email that very day. He did this without the permission or knowledge of his father; even his mother wasn’t allowed to know the details of this special education. Maria knew that her son spoke to someone, but Adam had asked that she not speak to anyone on the matter. After all, his father had wanted to drill his skull in search of an answer. That, Adam knew, was looking for answers in all the wrong places.
Adam believed then, as he did to the present, that his father confused the brain with the mind. This was the first error that Sanjay Kundit Singh asked Adam to let go of, to release.
“Release your connection to the physical world, to the material nature of mankind. Your gift is from God; the material world cannot help you understand or accept what is not of that realm. You must first give in to the world of God, and if you do, I will show you how to quiet your mind. Then, I will show you new worlds, and new experiences that only those so blessed such as are we can experience. Where you go from there will then be a matter between you and God alone.”
Adam did give himself over to God, to the infinite realm, and within weeks under the tutelage of his new Indian master, he could quiet his mind. That the mind, his mind, existed independent of the physical world was now a tenet, a core belief that Adam possessed. He now had a connection to the infinite, to all that comprised the true nature of reality.
And, though still a child, he could apprehend that, with control, would come new power and new possibilities. As he released himself from the confines of the material world, he gained new insight. His faith was strengthened, and his dialogue with his confessor Priest led to new, and startling insights into himself, the world, the Church, and the Infinite. In time, his Priest confided his knowledge of Adam to his Church elders who in turn confided this gift to the Vatican.
To his Priest confessor, the Vatican said, “Watch him. Encourage him. And report his progress to us regularly. This one we will want to watch carefully. He’s not the first of his kind about whom we have become aware, but he may be among the first to survive his gifts. But only if it is Gods will.”
***
Quieting his mind, ordering his intellect, and applying his stored knowledge to his work became the focus of his continued growth and the evolution of his mind. But he still had almost no understanding of the full range and capabilities inherent in his gift nor the full connection possible between his conscious and unconscious minds.
Adam spent many years constructing the foundation and infrastructure of his ability. Then, he constructed the many tools, and pathways he would require. Then he built the storerooms of knowledge and began filling those storerooms. He then began constructing the new connections unknown to mankind, the software to operate and enhance his mind, and the new raw materials necessary to finish construction of a new thing: Adam remade.
His new mind was untested and had been allowed only to perform meaningless mind tricks, a forewarning and notice of the abilities he would soon need to unleash.
Then it burst like a dam, not yet under control and about whose existence he wasn’t yet fully aware.
Until he met Alana, that connection had yet to blast through into his consciousness, he was only dimly aware of the full extent of the gifts he possessed. Adam had not been lazy; nor was he intellectually lacking. He simply didn’t have the tools to think big; bigger than anything he could’ve previously imagined, bigger than the confines of even superior human minds. Adam, while constrained by his own experience, found that his gifts were not.
In the end, his gifts drove him subconsciously to self-realization. At emergence, that terrible and destructive moment of consciousness of self and other, he almost perished. But in that moment of emergence, the limits and fetters on his mind were removed and everything, everything that God wrought into the Universe became his to explore.
On a level that was and was not consciousness, he accepted this new knowledge as intimate and imbued in the very fiber of his existence. Not in his body or his brain, but in his essence, his mind and soul. This he was shown in a burst of illumination so bright he was almost shattered. So too Alana experienced something emergent in her consciousness and core, though it was not, nor would it ever be, congruent with the burden that Adam would’ve to bear. Alana understood this entirely on some primal, organic level, although unlike Adam, she was initially terrified by it. She had no experience with this mind journey, so her reaction was to assume it to be some form of psychotic break, a hallucination; a weakness of her own makeup, a frailty that would be explained by other more coherent and grounded minds. To her great credit, she remained calm, and waited for her physical body, and brain to catch up to her refitted and realigned mind. She understood but would not have been able to explain cogently, that she was a critical piece, a path along which Adam must, of necessity, travel on his journey of life.
Adam had to begin this journey somewhere and with someone. Alana was the someone; Hawaii the somewhere.
Emergence was both frightening and alluring in its power; its expression not easy to comprehend. Alana couldn’t plumb the depths of its meaning until she could grasp its fundamentals more adequately; the same journey Adam had taken his entire previous life until now. Hers would be vastly accelerated, and when Adam controlled his mind, he would transfer that knowledge to her. She had to reflect, to watch, and then finally to accept this reality.
Then, when she was ready, she would fuse her mind to his. Another had preceded her in this; Alana would be second, but much more powerful. Her intimacy with both the Physical and the Spiritual would touch on the Infinite and lead her world into a new age.
Hannah had touched the outer edges of Adam’s mind and he hers; but it was Noki who had plumbed the depts in control; brave and fearless from the beginning. Finally, the soul least accepting of the infinite, and varied nature of the Universe, and of the true nature of reality would then finally let go and join with Adam in this way too. It would be easier for Misti when Alana finally relinquished her bonds to the limits and boundaries set by the confines of her own materialism. If Alana could make the Kierkegaardian leap of faith, so too could Misti. But before Misti could finally join, she would have to relinquish some portion on her personal faith in a Universe solely comprised of materialism. For Misti, a true materialist at heart, this would not be easy.
No rational argument could be made, no formula constructed which could explain the Infinite; it simply was.
For the finite, arrogance preceded understanding of all that was, all that is and all that will ever be.
Or so Adam believed.
Chapter 23
What happened next in very rapid succession were a series of startling discoveries that confounded Adam, who had lived with some aspects of his gifts all his life, and astounded Noki even more. She had no forewarning of the nature, rapidity, or extent of the journey the two had begun together. But it could be said that, outside some initial trepidation, it was Noki who wanted to jump into the exploration of their mind journeys as quickly and as deeply as possible.
It was Adam who insisted on slowing things down.
“Let’s at least try to understand each new component before we move on to new ones. If we go wrong, we might hurt ourselves, or each other.”
“If we do that, we’ll be old and have explored only a tiny bit of what is available to us now. We have to speed this up and find the basic parameters of what’s here inside our minds.”
“And if it’s Infinite?”
“Then we have a long road ahead and a finite amount of time available. We best get to it.”
And they did and found new ways of discovering what they needed to know. They found a place, if that’s what it could be called. A door, a portal to a vast storehouse of knowledge in an immense library that seemed to have but a single starting point but no end. And it was amazingly simple to use.
“What did you do?”
Adam was at the doorway to the great hallway outside, rooms and doorways stretching in every direction simultaneously. Noki had jumped into the vastness of the library that seemed to have no endpoints in any direction. It had a single starting point, and Adam waited for her there. He had no intention of getting lost, although, in point of fact, that wasn’t possible.
As Noki left that point, she disappeared. In a second she was back.
“How long was I gone?”
“A second, an instant? Why?”
“I love you Adam St. James. That’s why. And our children and their children too. I have seen, and lived and felt such immense and intense experiences I don’t even know where to begin.”
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