ARC OF THE IMMORTALS Book 2
Time Rifts: 3 / Crazed Monk? — Unknown Factors
Recap: Touzdae has a vision of an enlightened man seeing and accepting her. Jac tries to go out in a Time Hopper and fails. Touzdae offers help. A crazed man runs through and the station interior splits in-half.
On instinct, Jac reached for Touzdae. But she was on the other side of the deck. Touzdae felt a resonance in her heart and felt the connection to Jac.
The deck came together and they embraced.
Jac: What was that?
Touzdae (guessed): The Entu Monk?
They ran through the main corridor. And stopped where a Quartz rock face intersected the passage.
Touzdae: Was this here before?
Jac: I don’t know, I don’t remember.
They stood together outside of the Hopper Bay. Gazing down the foyer passed the long table toward the main corridor — it appeared normal.
Jac (incredulous): What was that?
Touzdae (in awe): A time loop of some kind?
Jac (guessed): and a crazed Entu monk?
Touzdae: Yeah, I saw him too and the deck split in two…
Jac (pondered): Right, hmm…
Touzdae: That was disconcerting and —
Touzdae: — disorienting. / Jac: — And disorienting.
They entered the natural light kitchen.
They prepared a modest meal. One food pack and the FRCS (Food Re-Constitution System) without any words between them. Touzdae sat opposite Jac at the long rectangular table as Jac delivered the food.
Too stunned to speak they ate in silence
Touzdae was about to speak, but Jac held out his hand palm first towards her and then closed his eyes.
“May I enter your field? See what you saw? And you do the same for me afterward?”
Touzdae was quiet while she checked in with herself, exhaled, and sent a thought back to him: Yes, good plan.
She felt him enter her field in the smallest of ways and sift through her time laid out in the immediate past. He skimmed through her moments softer than a whisper. Spacetime folded and expanded as she revealed the incident with the monk. Everything else appeared too. She was hesitant to let him see, came back to her breath, and released her need for secret-keeping.
Let it be, Touzdae thought to herself.
Touzdae remained still. Opposite Jac, she slowed her breath. He moved out beyond the outer layers of her EM field and opened to receive. He finished. And returned to himself as sly as a baby slithering snake underneath the floorboards.
He opened his eyes extended his hands across the table and waited.
In a moment she opened her eyes and placed her hands in his. She looked at his experience of the monk. It was transparent. She watched his compartments fall away. She felt his profound loss of Nez Fish, it clouded most of his actions. A part of his higher will was evident.
Jac: Who will go first, you or me?
Touzdae nodded and chose to hear his reporting. She listened as he described her sense of awe, wonder, excitement, and trepidation. Surrounding the monk incident.
Touzdae: I’d like to describe what I saw during my jumps with minimal content. Okay?
Jac nodded in the affirmative and opened himself to receive her beingness and her words.
Touzdae: I completed the practice jump without problem or incident. The second jump I went to my home thirty minutes for the journey to the past. I used some transdimensional feathering to widen the time I spent there. Even in that time many years before I was born — it seemed familiar and I was comfortable…
Touzdae (paused; searching for a space for the words): But I felt something enter hard to describe. Like on tiny feet in the beginning, middle, and end of my journey. It was so small and subtle it was hard to know or find.
She continued: It felt neutral. I tried to look at it to see more of it, it disappeared leaving me to feel that I had imagined it. What do see about that, Jac?
Jac: The first being who observed you was male and female. Tema* was neutral and with compassion. The second and third observations were from many points of view. The three or four different perspectives each canceled the presence of the other.
Touzdae pondered what Jac had said.
Jac (added with expectation): And?
Touzdae: I watched all the manuals and my mind keeps returning to the one warning, and I’m not sure why.”
Jac: What warning?
Touzdae (with great care and subtle love):
Jac, you need to promise me to watch all the holo-tutorials before you go out again. Please.
Jac: You have my word, I will. The warning?
Touzdae: Never observe this station in the present, past, or in future possibilities.
Jac: Does it explain?
Touzdae: Geordae, in a notebook, refers to the original texts in the library. They’re not translated. But I suspect that the Entu Monk may have viewed the station and fragmented himself in some profound way.
Touzdae (continued): My guess is the station is a constant. To look at the constant removes its anchor. It mirrors and distorts whoever looks at it. The fragments twist the mind looking at itself and form a loop. And insanity.
Jac: Geordae hints at that, yes. Do you think the observers are looking at us from here?
Touzdae: I’m not sure. I think so and I do not.
Jac: Right, no clear evidence either way.
He continued: I will look at all the tutorials and learn everything I can know until I’m satisfied…
Jac tapped his forefinger to the side of his head and smiled a tight thin-lipped smile for a brief moment.
Jac spent an inordinate amount of time reviewing all data. He immersed his attention with the Time Hoppers first and Station protocols second. He took another practice trip out. It was without incident.
On the third trip he decided on thirty minutes. Jac fitted the primary neural interface to his forehead, front and back at the level of his third eye. He switched the time circuits to manual and looked through the view-scope at the time streams.
At first, the colored patterns were both fascinating and overwhelming. He stepped back using the internal prompts within the interface. He let go of the beauty of the streams. He felt the interface see his memories and he focused on a group of them. He located the time-space coordinates in the streams. First he parsed the precise location of the memory. Determined the electromagnetic signature of the person he wanted to see.
He entered the parsed streams.
At a distance of a few parsecs, he saw/sensed The Fish. He felt the familiarity of her presence, in effect his Mother. He neutralized his response to her and moved closer.
There he was — as he had been — half the man before Touzdae’s reuniting him with himself.
It flashed at him: Bendel right before Touzdae’s energy threw him out of the cave.
It was the face of Bendel and behind/inside his face and head, a beast hungry for flesh and blood.
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Contents
(a good piece to bookmark — add to your reading list to catch-up)
Thank you for joining me in the adventures that span lifetimes and worlds. Blessings on your journeys and odysseys. (If you do NOT wish to be tagged, let me know, and I’ll tag you not):
Alison Hollingsead | K. Pearson Bradley| Dougfrombk | Rebecca Romanelli | Joseph Lieungh | Dr. Preeti Singh | Ravyne Hawke | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Kris Bedenian | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | Blaine Coleman | Lee David Tyrrell | DL Nemeril | Rip Parker | Annelise Lords | Libby Shively McAvoy |
