by Brandt Legg
She nodded and brushed away a tear, stoic and sad.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She turned away. “I’m fine.”
I looked to Wandus for clarification.
“All the answers eventually come. Do not worry now.” The cloud of butterflies thickened as they began returning to the trees.
“They’re the symbol of the Movement,” I said absently.
“They are the symbol of transformation . . . reincarnation, change. Everything changes. They remind us that no matter what hardships we face and what obstacles may appear to be, they become something beautiful, free . . . magnificent.”
“It’s hard to see that in the world today. Soldiers seem to be everywhere, freedoms are vanishing, and Omnia has stolen anything of value.”
“Soldiers are pawns to the masters of war; it has always been this way. Soldiers will never end war. Their very existence makes it impossible; even drones must be flown by someone.”
“How do we stop them?” I asked, desperate to remove any block so that everyone would be able to feel what I had just felt.
“They will stop only when fear is gone. Fear will end only when people sit and observe their fear in mindfulness and see it for what it really is . . . nothing. Love allows no room for fear.”
“That’s not an easy thing for any of us to do,” Amber said.
“No, it is not,” Wandus replied. “Fear and suffering are strangely comforting to people. We think it makes us feel, we think we understand it; the absence of fear is an unknown and the unknown is scarier to us than the fear.”
“How can I teach people to get to where I just was? How do I tell them to let go of their fear?”
“It is a long road. People must let go of possessions; then much fear and suffering will be removed. When they see that all they need is internal and not external, they will find that place.”
“That’s the secret, isn’t it?” Amber asked. “Everything is within us.”
“Yes.” Wandus smiled. “We’ve been mistakenly living in an external world.”
“Is that why you are a breatharian and have no possessions?
“Thich Nhat Hanh said, ‘My actions are my only true belongings,’ and that is how we should all be,” Wandus said.
“But I can’t bring the whole world to this forest to speak with you. How can I show them?” I asked.
“You can bring them all here, you can take them to all the mystics, you can show them what you’ve seen, and tell them what you know. You can do all this with your words. Once people realize there is something more, they will want to know what it is and they will discover that in order to see what they’ve never seen, they will have to surrender what they’ve always seen.”
Amber and I strolled through the magical forest. There wasn’t much time before I had to meet Booker’s team on Dunaway’s yacht. There was a portal nearby that could get me to Wizard Island at Crater Lake and from there, straight to the yacht. Wandus had explained that the butterfly forest benefited from a slight time wrinkle when the butterflies were present, so my time there didn’t actually count against the clocks.
“I wanted to float with the butterflies in the morning, but now it looks like we won’t be here. The time wrinkle here fluctuates with the winds and we have to go soon.”
“The time stuff is confusing,” Amber said.
“Just remember, tomorrow has already happened somewhere, and yesterday is still going on someplace else.”
“Thanks, that clears it up,” Amber said sarcastically, giving me a gentle push.
“Have you noticed those little stars are gone?”
“What happened to them?”
“I think they’re around only when Wandus is.”
“But they’re on your tattoo.”
“It was Baca’s tattoo. His farm wasn’t far from here. While you were off looking around, Wandus told me Baca used to come here often and actually showed it to Wandus.”
“Is that how it got to be the symbol for the Movement?” she asked, pointing to my tattoo.
“Yeah, Wandus brought Booker and Spencer here.” The wisdom Wandus possessed and shared was incredible, but I felt untethered without Spencer. I’d lost so many people, yet it was impossible to think of defeating Omnia without him.
“You miss Spencer, don’t you?” Amber could read me better than almost anyone other than Spencer or Yangchen, unless it was about her. There she was blind. I wished she could have felt our souls uniting like I did; then she’d understand I loved her more than my own life. “I think I should go and spend some time with Linh,” Amber said, taking my hand and then letting it go. “You don’t need me getting in the way between you and Dunaway.”
“What? No. Stay with me.”
“Linh and I need to talk about things without you being around.”
“I’m not comfortable with that.”
“I’m sure you’re not.” She laughed, but only for a moment. “And I need to see Yangchen.”
I studied her. “Stay.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“There are things we don’t control, even when they are about our deepest desires.”
“Amber, we can control everything. Don’t you see? That’s what the Movement is about, putting our souls in charge.”
“For everything you’ve learned, Nate, you still don’t get it. When our souls are in charge, selfishness will be gone. And most of the passion you feel will go with it.”
“I don’t think so.”
We looked at each other a long, long time. Silently talking, remembering and loving, until little stars once again streamed in like confetti and Wandus appeared.
“Time to go, my friend.”
57
The portal dumped me onto the deck of an elaborate multi-million-dollar yacht. Grender, the leader of Booker’s team, helped me up.
“No one’s on board, Nate.”
“What? He was here!”
“Not anymore.”
“When did you all arrive?”
Grender checked his watch. I remembered him from reviewing Booker’s vast collection of employee profiles. They were all committed to memory. “Twelve minutes ago.”
“Let me look.”
“Suit yourself but we’ve searched everywhere.”
“This guy is not normal. I mean if he’s really gone, where the hell did he go? We’re in the middle of the ocean. Fifteen minutes ago he was still onboard.” I’d checked on the astral.
“All due respect, Nate. Time’s a funny thing.”
I chuckled, annoyed, and went below. Dunaway must be into something lucrative to afford a boat like this, I thought. A cup of tea sat on a table, still warm. He was right, no sign of Dunaway. I ran into Grender again in the back bedroom, which had been Dunaway’s.
“Dunaway left you a note,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Before what?”
“Up on deck.”
“What are you talking about, Nate?”
I looked at him and back at the door. There was only one way into that room and I hadn’t passed Grender in the hall. “Oh, you’re kidding me!” I ran.
I was out of breath when I reached the upper deck. Dunaway was waiting in the portal I’d come through. “Couldn’t leave without saying goodbye, Nate. Might not see you for a long time . . . but time’s a funny thing.” He laughed, morphed into Grender and back to himself, and laughed even harder. I dove for him but the portal closed and I crashed on the deck.
He’d taken my portal. How did Dunaway continue to best me? I picked myself up as the real Grender jogged up.
“What’d I miss?”
“Dunaway shapeshifted into you. He waited so he could take my portal and escape.”
“Clever bastard. I’d like to have seen that. Shapeshifting, portals, all kind of sci-fi, isn’t it?”
“Where’s the note?”
Grender pulled it out of his shirt pocket
. It was addressed to me and still sealed. I ripped it open and read it:
Dear Nate,
You amuse me . . . thinking you could find me and what? Capture me? Ha! You’re not smart enough to see it, but I should be the least of your worries. And I say that even though I now know what your precious Jadeo really is. Now you’re scared, aren’t you? Good. Next time we meet, you’ll be terrified.
Love, Dunaway
I crumpled the note and threw it on the deck. I reached Yangchen on the astral and found out the closest known portal was on Curaçao. Grender told me it would take twenty minutes to fly there on one of his seaplanes.
The island of Curaçao floated in the scents of oranges and exotic flowers. Colorful Dutch houses and fruit traders from Venezuela on one side gave way to cacti and crashing waves. There were two portals there, one at the old Fort Nassau located on the island’s high ground, the other in a stone arch sculpted by long-attacking tides. Yangchen didn’t know which one led to Crater Lake, only that one of them did.
“It’s a great place,” Grender said, as we walked the dock. A couple of his team were securing the seaplane in its slip. “A big, little island. One hundred seventy-one square miles, former Dutch colony. A favorite of cruise ships.”
I was about to ask Grender if he could get me to Fort Nassau when I heard a familiar voice call my name. Tapscott, the young mystic, rode up the beach on a horse, handed me the reins to another, and smiled.
“Tapscott, what are you doing here?” I asked, puzzled.
“Waiting for you.”
“How long have you been waiting?”
“I don’t know, a couple of weeks. It’s been fun, kind of hoped you’d be a few more days.”
“Come on,” he said, motioning to the empty saddle.
“Never been on one before,” I said.
“Good thing he’s gentle, probably won’t mind you much. If he refuses your guiding, try Gogen.”
I leaped up and steadied myself in the saddle. The horse didn’t seem to notice. “Thanks, Grender, for all your help, I’m good.”
“Booker told me to stay with you until you were heading back to the states.”
“And I’m on my way.”
He looked dubiously at the kid and me sitting on horses like a carnival photo op, scratched his chin, then looked back towards the marina.
“Look, Grender, you’re welcome to come if you can round up a few horses.”
“Hell, we’ll be at the Santa Barbara Resort if you need us,” he said. I was almost surprised Booker didn’t have a house on the island.
“Do you know where the portals are?” I asked Tapscott as we rode down the beach.
“Sure. But there’s something else to do before you go.”
“I hope it involves food.” I hadn’t eaten since the last island.
“I’ve got you covered.” Up the beach a little way, perched awkwardly on a low craggy cliff, was a corrugated metal shack. A faded sign advertised a carrot, an onion and some kind of green leaf. Turns out they served the tastiest grilled vegetable dishes in the southern Caribbean, and there was a tropical fruit cobbler that reminded me of my mom’s desserts.
While we ate, Tapscott told me why he was there. “You have not been practicing Airgon.”
“I’ve been too busy. Do you have any idea what my life’s been like?”
“I do because I have experienced parts of it through Airgon,” he said. “I’m only ten, but I don’t know why you let someone as pretty as Amber leave you.”
“What do you know about Amber?”
“A few minutes ago, I captured an air molecule from you. It was inhaled and exhaled during your time in the butterfly forest with her. It showed me everything around it. And since you breathed that same molecule several times, I saw a lot.” He laughed. “But you want to know the best part? Amber inhaled the same molecule. So I saw the same scene from her perspective.”
“Really? Tell me what she was thinking.”
“It’s not always about thoughts.
58
Tapscott explained that Airgon’s best application centered around its way of showing and understanding the energy present in each moment. It took me a while to get my head around that but, when he talked about the time between Amber and me in the butterfly forest, it made sense.
“Amber has three great desires in this life. The first is to align her personality with her soul; second is to be with you; third is seeing the Movement succeed,” the ten-year-old mystic said in a manner which belied his youth.
“I could have guessed that without Airgon.”
“Yes, but you also would have guessed that it is those same three desires which motivate her. Instead it is her awareness that she will not obtain any of them that determines her actions and reactions.”
“Why won’t she obtain those desires?”
“They contradict her destiny.”
“But we can change our destiny.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever tried? It’s crazy-wild hard.”
“What is her destiny?”
“I don’t know, Airgon only shows so much. But if you want to know, you could always just ask her.”
“Does she know?”
“Oh, yes, she knows; it has weighed on her for some time.”
“She won’t tell me.”
“You won’t know unless you ask.”
He made sense. I would ask her and if she didn’t answer, Yangchen might tell me.
“You got all that from Airgon?”
“And more. For instance, your inability to decide whether you want most to be with Amber or Linh, your turmoil over wanting to lead the Movement and wanting to run and hide, needing to make Dustin proud of you while at the same time trying to show you don’t care what he thinks, missing your mother and being angry with her . . . you’re a huge jumble of conflict and contradiction.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Some more than others.”
After eating, we continued our ride and were soon in a rural area. He showed me how to inhale deliberately and with a clear mind. Hundreds of thousands of simultaneous images appeared, overloading me until a kind of circuit breaker switched and my subconscious cranked into action. Tapscott said they were called Airgon trips. The images came charged with energy and surrounded by feelings. It was mind-blowing.
“You can do Airgon anywhere but the islands in the Caribbean are particularly good,” Tapscott said. “The trade winds, proximity to other cultures and clean air help make it more productive. A lot of places can be stagnant and sometimes you’ll wind up getting a whole bunch of results from the Industrial Revolution or Europe’s Dark Ages, not fun stuff. California is usually difficult for some reason.”
“What about Washington, DC?”
“Never tried it there.”
It would be fair to say that during the next hour I learned more from Airgon than I had in my entire life up to that day. Instead of using Vising to absorb a book in seconds, Airgon allowed me to absorb billions of fragments from millions of lifetimes – most unrelated to my soul. Conversations, emotions, thoughts, knowledge, and information of every type filtered through me at an absolutely stunning speed.
Complex business deals from forty years earlier, lovers’ intimate moments two weeks ago, a feud between neighbors, a child playing, farmers in their fields, soldiers dying . . . every kind of thing, across human history and from all over the world. The molecules traveled and circulated with each occurrence imprinting its energy pattern.
Another two hours of Airgon trips left me mentally exhausted. The process would eventually become invigorating, Tapscott said, but the first few times were tiring. In the billions of fragments I absorbed, dozens contained the Jadeo. I came across the betrayer and believed he would be recognizable when encountered in this lifetime. One thing that struck me was how many wars littered the timeline of humanity’s existence on earth. Probably three-fourths of the fifteen billion fragments involved war, violent crime or s
ome other heavy conflict. Seeing it that way seemed to prove that we were doing something wrong, even the so-called “good guys” must accept part of the responsibility for this abysmal record.
When we reached the portal on a deserted section of coast, Tapscott asked if I had any other questions.
“Now I understand how important Airgon is, and I’ll practice more, but what is it going to show me?”
“Everything.”
59
The trip had been easy and, after a lecture from the Old Man on Wizard Island, I took the portal-to-anywhere to the lake house, then stumbled into Amber in the foyer. She hugged me, long and warm, then stood back and said, “Linh’s out back.”
Linh sat on a bench near the lavender labyrinth as if expecting me. Her expression was stern.
“We need to talk about the island,” I began.
“What is there to talk about? You kicked me over the falls to my death.”
“You didn’t die.”
“I should have.”
“No. Kyle came to me and told me that things weren’t what they seemed. There was only a second to decide and I decided to let Amber go, but in that instant, I recalled Kyle’s warning and I let you go instead. If I’d let Amber go she would have died, but by letting you go, you both lived.”
“How do you know that’s what Kyle’s message meant?”
“I don’t, but that’s how I took it.”
“You got lucky.” She glared at me. “And who do you want now?”
“Linh, I’ve been confused about so much.”
“Damn it, Nate! You’re nineteen years old, one of the entrusted nine, one of two surviving members of your generation’s seven, dozens of people have died for you . . . died! You don’t get to be confused.”
“I’m trying.”
“Not hard enough. Not even close.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“Finish, then.”
“I’d rather talk about this when you aren’t so upset.”
“If we had that luxury that might be a good idea. Unfortunately, there are more than a few powers conspiring against us.” Her eyes suddenly overflowed with tears.