THE SLIDE : Part 3
Chapter 31 | Time Out of Joint
Mystery, Time Travel, Karma
Warning: Two Brief Scenes of Graphic Violence
Outside a Mayan City-State, 3085 BCE
Farha arrived along the outbound route she and Hrez had taken instead of through the Churn. Cascading images of the near future washed over her and she made course corrections through the time travel stream. As she approached the cocoon, she instinctively created a ball of light around herself and slipped through the boundary to the interior of the cocoon.
Sophia confronted her with a broadsword until she realized it was Farha.
“You got my -,” Farha stopped short, glancing at the two cocoon pods, each with a body inside.
Farha looked down, about to exclaim shock, when she saw herself in the fetal position. She collapsed to the ground.
“I’m okay. I did not faint. My body gets startled sometimes,” Farha reassured Sophia.
“Do you know what happened?” they both spoke simultaneously. There was a pause, followed by laughter.
“Did we ever come back from the first trip?” Farha asked.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I got lost in confusion for a few days. And as you know, that’s very unusual for me.”
“What are your thoughts?” Farha asked.
“The confusion didn’t come from me, but from you and Hrez,” she pointed at the two cocoons on the bedrock. “But at the same time, it came from at least two other sources.”
Farha described their journey back to the castle — the direct route, and that a day or so ago that she had seen a dark hook-shaped creature near Hrez’s head. She asked Sophia for her thoughts again.
“My father used to say that the Slide had a spirit in it that absorbed whatever was around and in it. Maybe why the Slide chose the desert as its home because of the purity and strong survival instincts of any desert. The Slide could be responding instinctually in a search for balance as it is with all of nature. That’s one possibility. The hook-shaped creature could be an instinctual self-protective being that’s looking to protect the Slide and the Churn.” Sophia looked to Farha for a response.
“Do you believe that — what you said?”
“No. It feels like someone with dark energy is behind it. It could be someone who has fallen, like Ra, or the SS,” Sophia said flatly.
“It’s hard for me to believe that Ra would do this, but the SS. Do they even have the know-how to splinter realities?” Farha wondered.
“I have heard that new SS members are scientists and technicians — a theoretical physicist among them,” Sophia said.
“How do we get me and Hrez out?”
“How is it that Hrez isn’t here with you?” Sophia’s question punctured something in Farha.
“You probably know the answer to that. Oui?” Farha parried.
“Oui, he thought it too dangerous,” Sophia said, and Farha nodded in agreement. “Did he tell you how to proceed?” Sophia asked, her voice quieter.
“Yes. Observe, return, and report. But I have tried to go back along the route and after nineteen tries, I stopped. I tried the dreamtime too. I could see and hear him, but he spoke gibberish,” Farha said. A second later, a light came across her face.
“What? You have something?” Sophia was infected by Farha’s excitement.
“Yes, but I don’t want to jinx it. But, here’s what I want you to do…”
Interdimensional Flux
Farha dropped into deep meditation and accessed dreamtime, focusing on Hrez. She expanded her auric field to include him and… The first two times she could not find him.
The white light with purple flecks sparked all around her and Hrez in the chamber beneath the dungeon before it popped.
“Damn,” Farha said.
“That’s a confidence builder,” Hrez said.
“It is good to see you, and I intended to transport you to the Mayan past.”
“If I had known. If you had communicated that to me,” Hrez wore frustration in his voice.
“I tried many times to contact you in dream time, but your words were scrambled,” Farha easily released her frustrations as they arose.
“Oh, that was you. I wasn’t sure it was. I‘m not doing very well.”
A red light flashed, but no sound. Hrez pointed at it. Farha turned. As she was about to speak, Hrez put his large hand over her mouth and whispered:
“It’s a silent proximity alarm. Someone’s coming,”
The door opened. A man entered wearing an environmental — spacesuit. He cracked his helmet and said aloud, “I am K. This is all for you. I am so grateful.”
Farha raised her light bubble around herself and Hrez. They popped out of the space.
The Atlantean: a Mayan Palace to the East
The pulsing light bubble shrank into a small, white blinking marble crystal and slipped into Farha’s palm. It was the palm of her right hand. Their free-floating consciousness began its descent towards the Mayan Palace, Atlantean, and in an eye blink passed through the roof to the terrace of the Mai.
The ground was soaked with recent rain. The skies were cloudy. The Counsel of Five had restrained Mai Hezacta. “No downpour,” one of them said. The chief of the Counsel, a woman commanded that Mai’s head be shaved.
And it was done. The mashed berries were spread over his cleanly shaven scalp.
“Your skin and nerves are being numbed so that we may cut and chip away at your skull. You will feel no pain.” the chief of the Counsel said with ambition in her tone.
Zed’s Secret Office
Q, A, K, and Zed were gathered in Zed’s cramped office for an “inside” meeting, as Zed liked to call them.
“Kudos to K for setting up a stable field, Q and A for guiding the two subjects to the field, and of course, my brilliant idea of making reality happen, as it were,” Zed said enigmatically beamed.
“Fuck yeah,” K exclaimed.
Q, A, and Zed stared at K, who turned beet red.
After a few moments: “Sorry, won’t happen again,” K said quietly.
The Atlantean Palace — Terrace of the Mai
They began eating pieces of his brain. The skies opened, A torrential rain fell for 90 days and nights.
Under the Dungeon
A red light flashed. Hrez whispered:
“It’s a silent proximity alarm. Someone’s coming,”
The door opened. A man entered, donned in a spacesuit. He cracked his helmet and said aloud, “I am K. This is all for you. I am so grateful. You helped me heal of some of my karma. I was the Chief of the Counsel of Five. I am so grateful.”
Zed’s Secret Office
“I am grateful too, that our sensor revealed it was you, K,” Zed said flatly as he raised his sidearm and shot K in the head.
Previous: Chapter 30 — The First Churn (continued)
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Thanks for reading. Comments and questions are welcome. Of course, I will not be revealing any conclusions, twists, or endings; just the clues… guesses on how it will end are welcomed.
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