Chapter 12
The Project Room was a place in the temple where the ceiling had given way and dirt had poured in. The five were digging, using bits of stone, and any artifact discarded by the giants, which was mostly bones. The pit was considered a rubbish bin, and this is how the residents of the pit acquired their clothes.
The hole was a reasonably sized hole, narrowing the further along one got. It had a purposely shallow incline because the hope was to come up in an area away from the giants. I learned from them that male giants roamed the landscape looking for treasure and food to appease the female giants. The males were loners and fairly easy to evade. The woman always worked in groups, but tended to stay within range of the territory they had claimed. If they broke free, they would wait for a ‘shadow night’ to fully emerge. Thetis wanted to return to the ‘wonder’ but the others wanted to go to the forest and make their way back to a human settlement. I was going to ask what the ‘wonder’ was, but I was given a stone and invited to take a turn digging.
I don’t know if any of you reading this has ever dug a hole, but let me assure you, it is hard work. And most the time, when we dig, we dig from the surface down, and we have proper tools. I was digging up, which was less digging and more chipping and doing so in the dark with second sight, but I still wanted my eyes open, but I would get debris in my eyes and would stop digging due to the discomfort. And if the tunnel started to collapse you have to scoot our backwards as fast as you can and that happened once and I was damn lucky in the since that I wasn’t buried alive, but had to clear out a section that had already been cleared out. And then I encountered a root. I hate removing roots! Roots are ridiculously difficult without the right tools. I’ve tried power drills, and rotary saws, and pretty much, unless you have a chain saw and you’re willing to plunge it into root and earth, which is not the recommended procedure, or if you want to get a backhoe to dig them out, well, roots are a mess. I chipped and scratched at the root until my dent became a groove. I continued until I was tagged out.
I returned to the project room, my hand raw, blistered, and bleeding.
“You worked longer than we thought you would, being a newbie and all,” Thetis said. “Come. The spirit has brought you fish.”
“It’s not a spirit,” I said. “It’s called a Hath.”
“Roran says it’s a Dugong,” Thetis said. “Egecatl says it’s a demon. I think we see what we want to see with second sight. All we know for certain is it won’t let us drown and it brings us fish.”
And indeed, there was a pile of fish near the water. Again, I was hungry enough to eat raw fish. I sat down, my feet in the water, my boots still where I had left them. I ate slower and managed not to get any bones stuck in my mouth, nor did I throw up.
“Here, these are also yours,” Thetis said, giving me two more. “I am going to take these to the others. Do you want to come?”
“I want to sit here awhile,” I said.
Thetis touched my shoulder, gathered the fish, and departed to the other room. I suspected it was raining above as water began to come in from the pit opening. Seeing ripples on the water with second sight was interesting. Letting the sound resolve itself into its own vision, was even more interesting. Now this was probably more hallucination than true sight, perhaps a spontaneous episode of synesthesia, in the prolonged darkness sound was becoming light. But it wasn’t just light, it was musical notes and leaves. I was reminded of a saying from Tesla, something to the effect if you want to understand everything know that it is energy and frequencies and vibrations. Mt thinking about tesla quotes was interrupted by a cat walking across the water. It came to me. I petted the cat and it seemed real enough and so I picked it up and hugged it to me.
“Isis?” I asked.
“Be not afraid,” I heard it say. “All is well.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “Can you not see the current state of affairs?”
“I see what’s real and what’s not and I want you to trust me,” Isis said.
“Why didn’t you come sooner?” I asked.
“Because, sometimes it’s harder to get through the noise,” Isis said.
“Is everyone there okay?” I asked.
“Do not worry about us,” Isis said.
“What about my other life?” I asked. “I feel like I have been gone for ages. I only have one recollection of being back and it felt like a dream. And I am worried, there is no going back.”
“There is no going back,” Isis said. “Only going forward.”
“I don’t remember signing up for this,” I complained. “This is much harder than I thought it would be.”
“You believe that you are here and not there, and when you were there you believed you there and not here,” Isis said.
“Are you saying I am not here?” I asked.
“Do you believe in past lives?” Isis asked.
“Yes,” I said. I’ve had experiences that suggest as much. “Don’t you?”
“No,” Isis said.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re Isis. I thought the Egyptians believed in an afterlife and past and future lives.”
“They did, they do, they will,” Isis said. “I do not believe in past lives, John, because I do not believe in time. There is no time, there is no space, there is only consciousness. There is only energy. There is only light. There is only love. There is nothing else. And when you evolve past your ideas of space/time you will realize the truth, that you are not just a soul experiencing many lives over time, but that you are a soul experiencing multiple, simultaneous lives, incarnating all at once. If the in the consensus of all your lives together resulted in recognition of a need of any one of its other constituent parts, then that need would be filled, instantaneously. And if it becomes necessary to rewrite history, the same way an author erases a chapter or you chose a different path in a dream during a false awakening, then that is what will happen. And if doesn’t happen, then you can bet your life that it is necessary for your development to be where you are.”
“But maybe if you had come sooner, I could have learned to see sooner,” I said.
“Or, you would have never learned to see with your own light, while following mine. This knowledge, too, is now available to all of you, and it will improve you’re the life you perceive to be your present life on Origin. All of your lives are connected,” Isis said, rubbing her face against mine, purring, putting paw against my cheek. “Do not fear that your Earthly life will be interrupted. It is necessary for that world line to play itself out in its entirety. However, you will find due to the increased receptivity to the multiplicity of simultaneous ventures, your Earthly life will change. You should expect to have more paranormal events in that lifetime. You may see UFO’s, encounter spirits, or talk to trees and animals. Your ideas of supernatural will become natural, and when that happens, you will be open to and discover that there is a whole new level of supernatural that will be incomparable to anything else you know. You will eventually not make a distinction between a mundane, normal life and other lives, because ultimately it is all one, though in the beginning, it may feel disconcerting as your perception bounces. All people do this all the time, but mostly, people are focused on the one, and very few remember their dreams, which is the best way to access the other worlds while maintaining a sense of continuity. The analogy is reading more than one book, a chapter at a time, or bouncing television stations when the commercials come on. You may not see a full episode, but the episode continues even if you aren’t aware of it. If you require, you can go back for the fine details, but it isn’t necessary for comprehensive understanding. You don’t need to know the precise failure of circumstances to understand the fact the castaways are still on the island at the end of the episode or that Gilligan was likely an influencing factor to keep the status quo, while still delivering hope.”
“You always manage to comfort me,” I said.
“No, you’re comforting yourself. You are blind and yet you see,” Isis said.
“I really like that song,” I said, but I like the one at the end of ‘Wrath of Kahn’ with the bag pipes, and then the full orchestra kicks in. My eyes tearing up as my eyes touched that. The people that say Trek is more tech than myth need to watch more Trek. Spock is dead, but will rise again. Ever hopeful! “But there are other explanations.”
“Thousands of explanations,” Isis said. “Bilocation through the use of astral bodies, doppelgangers, projections, or the use of avatars. Those are just the top five. The universe is much more incredible than you have ever imagined. It’s not science versus mythology. It’s the blending of the two…”
And then Isis was gone. The rain storm had passed and the water falling in through the pit opening was diminishing. The Hath emerged from the water for a moment, high enough I could see it, and then fell below the water’s surface.
“Can you hear me?” I asked.
A response came in the form of a splash on the surface. Oh, I was excited.
“You understand English!” I said. Another splash for confirmation. “Oh, but you can’t speak without your breather, because it’s also a translator!” More splashes, like I hit the jackpot. We worked out a game of one splash for yes, two splashes for no. “You’re trapped?” Yes. “Are you okay?” No. “Are you injured?” No. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but it had to be a yes or no until we worked out a more sophisticated way of communicating. I tried to imagine what it was like to be alone, trapped in a pool in the underground. “You’re lonely!” Yes! “Lonely. And afraid.” Yes. “You’re afraid the people you’re helping will leave and forget about you.” Yes! “Then hear this now. I know you’re Hath. If we find a way out, I will return for you. Do you hear me?! You hang on. I will tell others. I or someone will come for you.”
The creature made a mournful noise of relief. All this time, I had been caught up in my own misery when right next door to me was another person suffering. I slipped into the water, moving down deeper, until I was up to my neck, and the Hath hugged me. I hugged back. And then I returned to the temple floor. I told the Hath what the people were doing and about their plan. The others returned while I was holding this conversation.
“Who are you talking to?” Thetis asked.
I explained. And I introduced them to the spirit and I think my explanation moved them all to tears, because they wept and went down into the water and hugged their friend as if meeting someone for the first time. And, as would be expected of ‘failed’ heroes, they each swore an oath that if they did nothing else, they would seek out the assistance of his people to bring him home. And from that day forwards, until we broke out of the tunnel, everyone spent time with the Hath.
Over the next couple days, Thetus told me more about the ‘wonder.’ “It’s a place of constant change, and the ghost that lives there is calling for Champions,” she said. “That is why heroes from all over the universe have been summoned to this time and place.”
“It is also why there are so many villains,” Roran said. She asked if I was going to eat the head and I surrendered it to her.
Egecatl agreed with her. “You can’t draw heroes without drawing some villains. There has to be challenges in order to prove ourselves worthy.”
“I think the ghost hasn’t decided if it will be good or bad, and that’s why it summons both,” Roran said.
“I am the only one here that moved beyond the ghost,” Thetis said. “Some people just can’t pass the ghost. But the inside is tricky and one misstep and you find yourself back outside. Sometimes right where you started, and sometimes miles beyond.”
“How to you find your way back?” I asked.
“It calls to us, even though we failed,” Thetis said. “It calls to us even now.”
“And the villains, too. There will a convergence one day, when all shall meet on an open playing field,” Egecatl said.
“Are you guessing or mythologizing?” I asked.
“I am a seer, a healer, a shaman from Peru,” Egecatl said. “I learned long ago how to walk the many worlds and many spirits have called me to join them on their quests, but this one appealed to me. This has been my most challenging quest and these days in the dark, with these unlikely friends, have caused me to grow in ways I had never imagined. And even when I thought there could be no further surprises, you came and introduced me to the spirit who I didn’t even thank for preventing my drowning. I have yet to thank Thetis for the second sight. I am in debt to all of you.”
The others kept mostly to themselves and rarely spoke more than a few words, but Coreen had opened up since hugging the Hath. If I were a guessing man, I would say her origin was Earth, Australia, and that she was an aborigine.
“There are many characters in the dream time, which make for many distractions on our walk,” Coreen said. “But this gathering seems more purposeful than mere distraction. Maybe we should be more purposeful about what we do after reaching the surface. Maybe we should walk together.”
“I am going to return to the Wonder,” Thetis said. “I am determined to answer that call.”
“We have made an oath to help the water man,” Egecatl said. “We increase the odds of helping him if we split up, so we are not all caught up in the same place. And we will all get caught up in something. That is inevitable.”
“Even if we split up, the distractions will come for us all,” Coreen said. “That is part of the walking.”
“So, assuming we split up from the beginning or stay together and are accidentally separated, each of us carries the mission to save the Hath,” I said. I described a great wall that was built to keep out the giants. I reported it was near the ocean and it was perhaps center line of the equator, which one might discern from being mid-stream of the floating islands. The further one got from the equator, the less dense the floating islands became.
“I have seen this wall!” Egecatl said. “It reminds me of my home. Do you suppose these Hath are the ones that helped my ancestors to build the great wall and the pyramids?”
“I am open to just about any reality at this point,” I said.
“I see more clearly now, with the second sight,” Isold spoke. Her voice was quiet, and she sat further away from the group, and was the most aloof. “But I still see what I want to see. We all are seeing what we want to see. I thought I was mad, and that the lot of you were ghosts, and yet, I continue to exist here, and you persist with your madness. I have not perished, though I am hungry, and frequently cold. Even so, I have come to enjoy it here. I anticipate being sad. I fear leaving, because I worry that the light of day will reveal you were all merely voices in my head.”
“Something has changed,” Thetis said. “None of us have spoken this much.”
“I think we will break free soon,” Isold said. “The texture of the earth has changed.”
“John heralded the change,” Egecatl said.
“Why are you here, John?” Thetis asked.
“Here in the pit? Well, long story short, I came to ask the giantess to release the dragons from their chains,” I said.
It was quiet. Egecatl laughed. Isold followed. And then they were all laughing and the laughter was like falling leaves of musical notes in my mind and there was a glittering of light. When it was done, Egecatl hit my arm.
“We free the dragons, free the water man, and then we free the ghost of the great wonder,” Egecatl said.
“Not necessarily in that order,” Roran said.
“I think we should go see the ghost, first,” I said.
“Because?” Thetis asked.
“Well, because, I have never seen a ghost, and I am curious. Also, because, I am betting this place of wonder you describe is the very place my friend is looking for, and she can help us free the dragons and rescue the Hath,” I said.
“Your friend,” Thetis said. “Is he a god?”
“Well, no, but she is the daughter of a Time Lord,” I said. There was a barrage of questions. I tried to explain, but even I don’t have all the answers. Time Lords are Gallifreyans, and they are indistinguishable from humans, unless you listen to their chest and discover they have two hearts. And though television cannon never answers why they appear human, if you require an explanation to ease the dissonance in your ‘head cannon,’ the book ‘Lucifer Rising’ explains the similarity being the result of morphogenetic fields. I like that answer, and the 12th monkey phenomena has been proffered as evidence of such a field, which connects us all together in a super-conscious field that binds everything together. Again, I found myself awestruck that Tesla, who basically proposed everything is consciousness in his treatise that everything was energy, was a part of my crew. When asked ‘how does it fill to be the smartest man in the world?’ Einstein answered: ‘I don’t know. You should ask Tesla.’ In fact, there has been no theories for consciousness offered, short of materialist saying it is just an illusory artifact that doesn’t exist in nature, which reduces all human behavior to nothing more than impulse reactions. A true materialist think we’re zombies. I think we’re more.
If my theory is right that humans evolve into Gallifreyans, well, maybe it’s a result of dabbling in time. And maybe that’s why the Doctor keeps coming back to Earth. He is subconsciously drawn to humanity, desiring to help and nurture and witness our development because in doing so, he learns about himself, and his own origins. But this is not cannon. It is only my own thoughts that I have toyed with and so, I didn’t offer this to my Pit friends. I merely presented the facts I knew. Jenny was the daughter of the Doctor. Though she was not born on Gallifrey, she is a Gallifreyan, and a Time Lord, and she is young and finding her way, partly because she skipped the normal childhood and was born with knowledge preset, perhaps even knowledge taken from the Doctor himself, which would explain her belief that she has had access to his memories through dreams. Perhaps her personality matrix blocked her from having full knowledge, or maybe it required being unlocked with experience and habituation of exercising certain neural pathways. Whatever it was, she was an enigma.
“Aren’t we all?” Isold asked.
Roran was the one that broke free into sunlight. It was a small hole and she closed her eyes and simply allowed the sunbeam to touch her face and she basked in this until she had had her fill and then she came and informed us. We gathered at the pool where we informed the Hath that we would be leaving. We could feel the sadness from it, but it also understood, it was necessary.
“I will be staying,” Isold decided.
“Are you sure?” Thetis asked.
“It is the right thing to do. If you fail in your mission, and no one comes, the water spirit will die of loneliness,” Isold said. “Also, if others fall from the sky through the pit, someone must be here to teach the second sight.”
“There are stone just past the opening we made. It will be necessary for us to cover the opening, so the giantess don’t know we’ve escaped their prison,” Roran said. “You may not be able to move it from the inside.”
“I will not leave till the spirit of the water is freed,” Isold said.
Thetis hugged her. I hugged her, too, then Roran and Egecatl, then Coreen. And then we left, squeezing though an opening that we dare not make larger, and pushing out into the world and into the light. It was like being born. I adjusted faster to daylight faster than the others, due to having spent the least amount of time underground. They stuck close to me, almost like they were relearning to see, until I recommended they use their second sight if they were struggling, and suddenly, there was no more struggling. And then we worked together to roll a misshaped boulder over the hole.