SWNOVELS Chapter 19: Steps to Heaven
We had taken off from L.A.X. at noon, and I was heading east. So I was traveling in to the future, in more ways than one. I couldn’t tell you the exact time, because I was busy listening to my music player. It was as an old Eddie Cochran song came on, “Now there are three steps to Heaven” when I distinctly heard the voice. “He’s wrong you know. There are many steps to Heaven.” I was confused that someone should have overheard my music. Surly it wasn’t that loud. The woman in the floral dress sat next to me was snoring, but the voice continued. “Don’t look round, there’s nothing to see anyway. I’m inside your head.” I stopped the track, and rather than utter my reply out loud, I posed my question in my mind. If her statement were true, I would get a reply. “What’s your name?”
As the words formed in my mind, an instant reply presented itself. “Call me Lucy A Limitless.” “That’s an odd name.” “It’s an ironic pseudonym I chose to illustrate a point. The Lucy comes from a film of the same name, about a woman evolving in to a much higher form of life during several days. Limitless refers to the mental giant created in another film, also of the same name.” “And the A?” I posed in my mind. “Akira, yet another ordinary person suddenly altered over a short time in to a supreme being.” “And the irony being as you said, that there are many steps needed to be taken, to achieve these advanced states of beings.” “Precisely the deductive reasoning I expected from you.
Let me tell you a story of a man who lived in a monastery, back in the tenth century. He wasn’t a monk; he just lived amongst those holy, learned men. No one knew where he came from, but all the men in that remote seat of knowledge turned to him, when any strange new problem presented itself. For he always had an uncanny knack of knowing just the right solution. When asked how he achieved this feat of almost divine knowledge, he would reply “When you have been around long enough, all problems are presented to you. I merely have a good memory.”
One day a young Samanera, a monk in training, joined the order. And for reasons known only to the mysterious man, he was taken under the wing of the solver of problems. Over time this bond between the two came to the attention of the Abbot, the leader of that community. He had to decide if the Samanera was indeed suited, for life as a fully-fledged monk. The Abbot was troubled by this youth. Not by his association with the man who always proclaimed to have no faith, despite his wisdom. But by the young man’s uncanny knack of sneaking up on brothers in the order; almost as if he were appearing out of thin air.
The meeting between the master and pupil, of the ecclesiastical element of the monastery, was concluded much to the perplexity of the Abbot. For not only had the Samanera expressed a wish to leave almost immediately, he carried a line of reasoning that had the Abbot heartily agreeing with him. So the Abbot furnished the youth with papers of safe passage, and what gold he could carry. With the setting of the sun that day, the youth departed with little ceremony.
Now you may ask what became of his friend; the scholastic giant that had take the youth under his wing. Well he had shut himself away on the day of the meeting, between the two men of the cloth. Many hours passed until the other monks fearful of their guest’s state of health, broke in to his chamber. What they found was an empty shell of the former mental giant, a drooling simpleton. They could only conclude the sudden departure of his scholastic ward, had broken the poor fellow. And he lived out his scant few years in this pitiful state.
Meanwhile the youth had travelled far and wide, never staying long in any place. When he found himself in Italy one day, in the age of reason. It must have been about the fourteenth century as I recall, and he had got word of a woman who it was said could predict the future. She had even let it be known that the youth would visit her, in the tower she was kept locked in. For even in those enlightened days, many feared her ability could be from a dark power. And so for her own safety, she was kept from public view. Not wanting to see her proved false the youth obliged her summons.
How he gained entry through the guards and locked doors, no one could tell. But the sentinel standing outside her cell caught snatches of the strangest conversation between the two. As if intoning a prayer, the youth told her a tale, while she spoke the same words in unison.
“It was before the Greeks, and will come after. But I speak now of those ancient times when Minos ruled an empire; they knew the legends. The heroes, demi gods and yes even the gods themselves. They did not start out with such powers, unless you look back to the past rather than forward to the future. But ever quarrelling; never of one mind. And so the days of such power passed, with oh so many of the gods passing. Until none remained but one. And he waited until a new voice cried out in the darkness. But the father had tried to make a son from his own flesh. It was doomed to fail, and so this one was forsaken. Thus the watcher waited on. He must wait for the natural course to resume, until the chosen would rise again. He waited a full millennium, to see the fruit of his plan ripen. But he could wait, now the right path was revealed to him.”
The guard outside the door heard a thud; and fearful he opened the grill to view the scene within. To his horror he found his charge was gone, and on the floor lay the youth. He was a mere incoherent fool. But what had happened to the woman? Those who sort her out never did find that maid again.
I take up my tale again as she wandered through the plague ridden streets of London. It was long after those who knew her face were dead and buried, along with their decedents. The stench was almost unbearable, but she endured it, for she was not alone. Can you guess who her two companions were, perhaps not? Needless to say she didn’t need a legion to fulfil her destiny, just the right kind of friends. So this lone figure stalked the streets, gambling on a certainty that she would meet a stranger, and make a new friend.
The doors all on this street were barred, least some unlucky soul should enter. And fall prey to the plague that befell this city. Then she stopped at one door that was barred like the rest. And pausing only an instant, she seemed to vanish in to nothing. But in an upper story room the boards creaked. It attracted the attention of a physician. He had just laid the funeral cloth over the head of his patient. The newcomer exchanged a few phrases about gods work; and consoled the practitioner of the healing arts. Then after a brief interview the doctor left that place alone. Leaving just another victim of the plague, drooling on the floor.
Not all of his wards suffered the same fate however. And then the fire came in sixteen sixty six, to purge the city of it’s pestilence. The good doctor now had a different foe to fight. And the poor souls who he managed to reach, would not have survived, if he had not held a burning door shut while they fled. Thus it was that no one was there to witness him walk unharmed, from this trial by fire. So many people were displaced by the cataclysm, that none missed the brave doctor. He left that city, and took to traveling with his three companions.
So it was in nineteen seventeen, when the doctor almost nonchalantly strolled through the mists of no mans land, seemingly being missed by bullets. Then he hopped down in to a German trench. He asked to see the captain in charge. A meeting was arranged, and soon the two were discussing the uncanny way none of the enemy seemed to fire at his men, not accurately anyway. Despite this good luck on his troops parts, the powers that be that commanded, never seemed willing to send his forces out to meet the enemy. It was as if they existed in an oasis of peace, amidst the hell that surrounded them.
The doctor asked if the captain had chosen this little bit of quiet in all the hell that stretched for many miles around them. And was told no for that was decided by a commander he had never clapped eyes on, some general probably half a country away. Just directing his poor pawns like in a game of chess. They couldn’t dictate day-to-day actions. So the captain did the best he could to keep his men safe until this war was over. And they could return home to their families. The doctor seemed ever to prompt the captain through the conversation, and then he elected to stay there through the final months of the conflict. So a uniform was furnished to him, in an unofficial way.
When it came time for the forces of the Keiser commanded, to retreat under the overwhelming powers of his foes. This band of soldiers under the captain’s command were able to retreat safely, and did indeed go back eventually to their families, that had prayed for their safe return. The captain and the doctor seemed to evade the conquering army, not even suffering any form of interment. Although as you may have guessed. The doctor was found some time later, in a state of advanced confusion. But as so many were broken in mind or body at that time, he was merely assumed to be another shell-shocked victim of the war.
Time passed as it does, and once more the forces that be, came to conflict. And so the captain arrived at one of the death camps. Set up to wipe the new order clean of any that didn’t fit in with the whims, of these new supposed over lords. He had not been brought here though, but chose to come. It was a dark night as a small boy sat making strange shapes, from discarded rubbish. Not with his hands, but by the force of his mind alone.
“You could save what remains of your brethren one day, but even this would be an empty gesture. The tapestry of life has many threads, yet it is one cloth.” The small child looked up in to the adults eyes, and a knowing smile lit his whole face up. The child replied, “One day I will be all, both sides of the coin, and spread across all time. Let us depart.” And with that, the throng within the vessel of a child disappeared. While another stood oblivious of the place of death in which he stood. No terror of his destruction could touch him now.
Against the backdrop of time an instant passed, a mere heartbeat of the world. Yet the path the small child took, was to lead him in to the swinging sixties. No hip pad was the destination of this refugee from the incarceration of the Nazi death camps though. He was aimed at another prison of sorts. This was the states answer for those lost in their minds, not that his goal was broken like her cellmates. She was merely overloaded from the thoughts of all around her, crowded in to make her own voice a whisper in the babble.
She lay on her bed seemingly catatonic, yet her eyes told a different story. Always darting this way and that, drawn by the random voices of the other inmates, living out their own hells. Then like the chorus of a choir, six voices called to her in unison. Their combined accord quietened the other voices. So the girl could in time choose which of the single voices to listen to, but that of course was later. For now she saw this small boy stood inexplicably in her cell, staring down at her. Yet she could hear a chant of many coming from his unmoving lips.
“Through time we must pass until we are complete, your sorrow is but a gift. Come with us and free your heart.” The girl was confused, still at her wits end. But then one of the voices rose above the rest, and yet the others were harmonising the captain’s attempts at calming her. And showing the way she could at last quieten the untold number of lesser voices. “Join with us and be strong.” At last she understood, and reaching out she became one of many. Accepting the collective in to her heart, in to her mind. Then the shell that had held the group bound as one and in accord, sat down. And the empty eyes witnessed the girl, as she vanished.
When the nurses came to feed her next, they found a new patient just as responsive as the last. Perhaps it was an administrative error. For how could one catatonic leave, and another enter the room through a locked door. The boy now residing there would never tell. While the girl wandered now, ever seeking the next piece in the jigsaw, looking ahead through the mists of time, and following the instinct that had always driven her on.”
I interjected at this point, for I knew where this rambling story was leading. Or at least I tried to. But as I had expected, the voice in my head continued with her tale, adding my comments to it.
“I know you were ten years in the future when you last slept, and will probably be in next week when you sit down for your supper tonight. But think where you could go if you found yourself able to draw on the various powers we have to offer. So you didn’t have to stick in the safe civilised time you call your own. And that fancy you just got, that it wasn’t the Greeks that should be learning from the gods, but the other way around. Where banding together to a single purpose they were undefeatable. Yes that is what we have to offer you. And one day, when the entire new evolution of man is collected as one, we may even be that which we call the Supreme Being, watching over the whole of time. See what a fine creation we have made.” I had to admit, you really can’t argue with that.