The Revolutions of Time Part 10

"Nothing. Nothing at all," he sighed, "I have said too much already, it is against the rules, you know."

"Yes, yes, the rules. Tell me, though, how would you say I am doing so far, am I at least doing fairly?"

"Of course, Jehu, you are doing excellently."

"Is it true about the revolutions of time and matter, then?"

"Yes, in fact, it goes even further than that... Say, Zimri, do you think it is allowable to tell him about the physical and the spiritual realms?"

Zimri said nothing, for he can say nothing, but he did nod his head in the affirmative. Thus sanctioned by his brother, Onan continued to speak, "Well, you know that physical existence is comprised of time and matter, and that both of these are involved in a revolving motion, from the minutest foundations to the largest additions. While they both are revolving within themselves, they are also revolving together, around an enigma which, as other of the centers, is completely devoid of the thing which revolves around it, but is found plentifully in them. In the case of matter, it revolves around a black hole, in which there is not found any matter, but there are places of emptiness inside of the matter, in fact, most of an atom is empty s.p.a.ce. In the case of time, it revolves around eternity, an enigma where there is no such thing as time, even as there are certain areas where no time exists in physical existence, such as a book. Likewise, physical existence, which is a combination of time and matter, revolves around a place in which there is no physical existence, namely, the spiritual realm. There is no physical in the spiritual, but there is spiritual in the physical. Physical existence is not whole without the spiritual, which binds it together in such a way that gives it life, the ability to think and reason.

"There is spiritual matter in everything, but it cannot be seen or sensed physically unless it is revealed to one by a force on the spiritual side. Or rather, it cannot be understood unless revealed, for it can always be seen through its effects. By this I mean that it leaves a trace in the physical realm, like a jellyfish that leaves a glowing trail in its wake. When the brain of a human thinks, it is not the actual brain that is thinking, instead it is the spiritual matter that exists in the brain, and this spiritual matter leaves a trail where it goes of electric signals and such. When someone feels a certain emotion, such as love or depression, it is felt in the spiritual realm, but its traces are seen in the physical, such as certain chemicals, but these are not the cause of the emotion, only the effect of them. It is possible, through certain drugs, to induce varying emotions, such as happiness or laughter, but these are not the actual emotions, only their physical counterparts, so that while it appears to be happiness, it is not, like the shadow of a man in a field: his form keeps the light from striking the ground beside him, but the shadow is not him, only the trace of him. Making a shadow like the man does not make the man, only the appearance of the man. While the how of a situation may be inferred through physical means, the why is an entirely spiritual matter, and any attempt to observe life without taking into account the spiritual matter behind it will end in the same result as evolution, as the scientists of your day generally imagined it, but which was, in fact, devolution.

"The laws of the physical realm are called science, such as the fact that energy and matter are neither created or destroyed in any natural or artificial process, or that everything left to itself tends toward disorder, or that life cannot come from non-life by natural or artificial processes. The laws of the spiritual realm are called morality. You have no doubt observed that when one does a certain thing, the end result is always good, and when one does something else, the end result is always bad. That is because there are spiritual laws that govern life, and just as there is gravity on the earth that always pulls things down to it, so there is a spiritual law that whenever someone steals something, the result is suffering for both of the parties involved. Just as it is a physical law that man must have oxygen to live, so it is a spiritual law that when someone murders another the end result is always suffering. Why is this, one may ask, but that is a foolish question, or at least a pointless one, for the law of gravity states that on the earth, all things fall downward towards the center of gravity, there is no reason why, except that it is, for it is observed continually to be the case.

"Since men cannot accept that there is a power over them, they deny it, and in the process they misinterpret the various things of life as physical things, not the spiritual things that they represent. For instance, love: men in many "advanced," that is to say, self-obsessed, civilizations, view it only in its physical materializations, but not in its spiritual context. When they see the results of love, romance especially, they do not understand that the romance is only the fruit of the spiritual essence of love, but instead think that the romance is love. There can be so-called romance on the physical level without its spiritual counterpart, but it is only the shadow of love, which will never fulfill and will never be complete, because, by definition, it is only a mocking of the true force of love. On the other hand, true romance is not, as some would seem to think, a certain action or set of actions, such as the gift of a precious metal or some colorful piece of foliage, instead it is whatever is the result of the spiritual love, for the physical manifestation of the spiritual essence of love is not confined to certain objects or actions, but to any that are sanctioned with its blessings. The daily toil of a poor man shows far more love than a lavish gift from a rich man."

When he had finished, I gave him a big grin and thanked him for his lecture, and then asked him how it was that this did not break the rules, but other things did. To this he replied that it affected my task only indirectly, while the other things were all direct concomitants.

Then he asked me if I had any other questions for him, and I replied that I did indeed have one. Which was as follows, "I know that there was a great war directly after my departure from my native temporal zone, and that it was very devastating in its reach and effect, and while I know that the situation was very tense at the time, I was under the impression that it was starting to cool down once more. What was it that set it all off?"

"The disappearance of an American fighter jet off the coast of China,"

he replied straight-forwardly.

My interest was suddenly aroused, for that was the very section where my squadron was stationed, and anyone who was lost would have been a close friend of mine. "Go on," I told him.

"The Americans claimed that it was shot down by the Chinese, and demanded an official apology. That the Chinese would not do, insisting that they had done no such thing, and instead of the whole situation diffusing, as you thought it would, both sides proceeded to war stubbornly, each thinking itself in the moral superiority. But that is as always."

"Do you have any idea whose ship it was that went down? They were all my comrades," I said.

"Of course I know, Jehu, for it was your plane."

"But how? I wasn't shot down, I crash landed on an island."

"But you came to me and I sent you here, and since your radios went out, they had no idea that you were safely landed."

"Still, they must have found the plane!"

"No, you know perfectly well that those islands are brought above and below sea level at different times. After you left, the island was brought below the water, and your plane was lost in the sea, no traces were found."

I was confused, "Onan, does that mean that I was the cause of the war?"

"From a certain point of view, yes."

He was about to say something else to me when we saw in the distance a group of about ten Munams coming toward us, being at that time a few miles away. He then told me that he must leave me again for the present, as he could not interfere directly with my mission. They bid me goodbye and I did the same to them, and then they walked down the opposite side of the hill that the Munams were approaching from. As they walked, they slowly disappeared, until they were gone without a trace, for even their footprints had faded to nothing.

During the time between Onan and Zimri's departure and the Munam's arrival, I was left to myself for a period of inward meditation, an activity that you have probably concluded that I am often given to, which is entirely the case. This new revelation was very troubling to me, that somehow I was the very cause of the destruction of humanity during the great wars, while also the kinsman redeemer over 500 years later, who was prophesied to be the one to bring humanity back into balance with nature, or to thrust it forever off the edge of existence into the d.a.m.nation of the ice ages. As I told you in the beginning, I am written in the pages of history as the destroyer of humanity, though if it is just or not, I am not able to judge. The name of Jehu will forever be a ripple on the surface of the waters of life, and when it is heard or spoken, the only feeling that it will bring will be hatred and disgust. If only mortals could see below the surface of the waters of life, for just as the ocean can be deceiving on its surface, so can life. Time is like an ocean, but when one looks upon it, what often happens is that all one sees is the present reflected back in its surface, and the eyes are shielded from what lies below, focusing instead on the surface, which is so trivial compared to the abyss which supports it. When one only sees the surface reflected back, then history and its wisdom lose their meaning, and one sees not the past but only the present. What I mean is this: if you look to the past to justify your actions rather than to guide them, you will not see the truths contained therein, but only what your presuppositions already were before you looked, and your ignorance will be reinforced rather than repudiated. Wisdom is the ability to see the past separate from the present, but when one sees the destruction of humanity, he will see only me, his vision being shielded from the true cause of it all, history.

The actions or inactions of one solitary soul cannot bring the end of life, only the acc.u.mulation of the wrongs and injustices of a whole race, the human race. Forever I will be eyed as the a.s.sa.s.sin of humanity, and yet that is not the truth at all, for I am the father of humanity, I am the beginning as well as the end. If you view me only as one or the other, you do not see me at all, but only a pale shadow of my true self. I am Jehu, past, present, and future, I am the concentration of humanity in all its forms and reproductions, I am the creator and destroyer of every age of this temporal maze. Why am I the defender and executioner of the race of men? Why am I the protagonist and antagonist of humanity? Why am I the father and the son, the beginning and the end?

Such a question is futile to ask in the physical realm, for here there are no answers to the why's, they are only to be found in the spiritual realm. The physical realm is left only with the how's, and it is those which I am attempting to clarify.

Chapter 12: The White Eagle

It was only a few moments after Onan and Zimri left me that the Munams arrived, for they had run, spurred on, apparently, by their great desire to meet me. In appearance they were like I had seen from afar: hairy and stooped, almost using their arms as legs, but not entirely. Their skulls were large and oddly shaped and their mouths were pushed out from their faces like an ape's. A limp, furry tail hung down from their lower backs, and their hands had a tough, leathery appearance.

There were eight of them, and when they drew near, the foremost hailed me with an eager gleam in his eyes, like one who has long hoped and long been denied. His voice was low and gravelly, but not at all uncivilized sounding, as one would have expected by his appearance, and his facial expressions were equally as livid and distinctly humanoid. He began:

"Hail, the White Eagle, sent by the G.o.ds to deliver us! Hail the redemption from paradise, coming to bring us home." With that he held out his arms and embraced me in a very warm, heartfelt manner.

"h.e.l.lo," I replied, somewhat embarra.s.sed by my lack of authority.

"I am Ramma, leader of the Munams," he told me, "And I welcome you in the name of us all."

"Greetings, Ramma," I replied, "I am Jehu."

"We are joyous at your arrival, oh Jehu of the White Eagle."

When he said this I had a flashback, a moment of memorial deja vu, when the present and the past are morphed together by one thought, when one idea from the past and the present exists in such a way as to connect the two times around it, forming a nexus between the two moments. I was brought back to two separate times, the first being my initial meeting with Onan, when I saw the muraled dome, the genetics of history, and its depiction of the events which were symbolically representative of Daem: the deformed man, the warring races, the worshipers of the White Eagle.

The other was my arrival in the Temple of Time, when the King showed me the altar to Temis, the G.o.d of Time, depicted as a great White Eagle, wrought in diamond and grasping the altar in its talons. There was something about the White Eagle that connected itself to me inseparably, something that converged us into one form. I had a sense that it was somehow a key to the mystery of the end times, but I could not make the connection. I thought back to what Onan had said to me just a few moments before, that he and Zimri were close friends, and not enemies at all, while those on earth believed their rivalry was a serious conflict.

Yet while I had two separate memorial deja vu's, I could not make the connection between them to figure out what they meant.

"Tell me," I asked of Ramma, "What do you mean when you call me the White Eagle?"

"The prophecy said that our kinsman redeemer, who would bring us out of the lands of desolation and into paradise, who would come to us like a giant eagle, soaring high above the sea. Across the ocean there," he said, pointing to Daem, "Is Daem, the paradise land, wherein dwell our enemies the Zards and Canitaurs. They keep us off of the island and on the mainland by force, and here we have suffered ever since the great wars, in these desolate and barren wastelands, where there is neither life nor death, but only a hazy in between. An ancient one with wings like an eagle was to come and rescue us, the White Eagle, and under his guidance we are to be led to victory against our enemies.

"To them he would be sent first, humbly he would come to redeem them from the woes of their own causing, but they would receive him not.

Instead they cast him away, and he was to come to us, to bring us to the promised land. What a blessed sight it was when we saw you soaring through the sky on your white wings, and now you have come, my dear Jehu, you have come at last, in the hour of our greatest need. Come, oh White Eagle, and let us go to Kalr, our city. Tonight is the Feast of the Hershonites, celebrating the night that the prophecy was received, and on the same day shall it be fulfilled!"

With that he turned and set off with a step of exuberance to the northwest, the other Munams and myself following him. He walked quickly, and it was all that I could do to match his pace, so that I was left without breath enough to ask any more questions. From what I saw on our journey, the landscape was the same across the whole mainland that was near to the coast, and there was neither change enough nor any landmark conspicuous enough for me to take any bearings. Without the Munam's company, I would have been lost.

Ramma led us on a straight course for about half an hour, there being nothing to steer around, and when that time had elapsed, we found ourselves in a small, battered city. There were no great buildings or infrastructure like in Nunami, nor any complex labyrinths like the Canitaur's military base. Instead there were only weak, unsound huts, built with a framework of oddly shaped driftwood and covered with a thick layer of insulating sod. A road ran through the center of the city, only distinguishable because it was packed down by constant use, and on either side were groupings of the huts in semi-circular patterns, with no s.p.a.ce between them left unfilled by soil. This created a wind barrier, preventing the strong winds that whipped across the desert lands from hara.s.sing the inhabitants as they worked and played in their communal yards. Each such grouping had a field of a strange, potato-like plant that spread across the back ends of the houses, where the fierce winds piled up loads of nutrient rich top soil from miles and miles around. In the center of the protected areas, each of the communities, for such they were called, had a well that reached hundreds of feet downwards, bringing them almost unlimited supplies of fresh water. Using these two major systems, they were able to live in a comfortable manner, not comfortable in a sense of comparison with the Zards or Canitaurs, but comfortable in the sense that they had food to eat, clothes to wear, and shelter to protect them. Under such conditions humanity can thrive, for happiness is not found in the acc.u.mulation of excess comforts, but in the acc.u.mulation of excess love. This the Munams had plenty of, and from that point of view were more the evolutionary form of humanity than the devolutionary.

The Munams all wore a sort of close fitting frock, a plain colored one piece suit that displayed their practicality and modesty. It is a hobby of mine to observe the clothing worn by different groups of people and compare it to their characteristics. As I have said before, clothes do not make the man, but the man certainly makes the clothes, and it is possible to judge a person's character by the type of attire that they wear, in that it is an expression of their tastes. The Munams were shown by their clothing to be a very friendly people, for their frocks were hung gently about the body in a manner that was at once both carefree and conservative. This is perfectly a.n.a.logous to their personalities.

When we came down through the center street, which was really the whole city, for there were no other roads, the people rushed out to meet us, and when they were told that it was the White Eagle, they began to dance joyously about in the streets. There was laughter and play going on all at once, and it was like a great burden lifted from my heart to see them rejoicing, for it almost reconciled their sufferings with the Zard's and Canitaur's ease of life, in that they seemed to be much more happy, in spite of the circ.u.mstances.

Ramma gave a short speech to the people, in which he detailed the prophecy and its fulfillment and, in general, encouraged everyone to hope for what was to come. When it was over, he and I retired to his home, which was rather larger than the others and formed its own semi- circle, containing as it did both his private quarters and the official offices of the government, which, while extremely limited in number, were well outfitted. The door of this building opened into a short hallway that had several doors adjacent to it. He led me down one of these and it proved to be a dining hall, though it was not as commodious as most, with only a round wooden table with a few chairs around it and some cupboards and cabinets.

Pulling my chair out for me to sit in, Ramma went through all the normal duties of host with great ease, and within a few moments we were eating heartily from a great dish of boiled potatoes that had been brought in by a servant, or rather, a deputy minister of state, for such was his t.i.tle. We did little talking before we ate, because I was greatly famished and as such was ill-inclined to be jovial, not that I was sullen, but I found it hard to be completely relaxed without a full stomach. Yet when that was remedied and I found myself satisfied and comfortable in a warm dwelling, I opened up to Ramma and we had a long and entertaining discussion, some of which I will record here, as it shines a little more light upon the mysteries of my story:

"So, my dear Jehu," Ramma began, "I trust your stay on Daem has so far been enjoyable."

I chuckled quietly and told him, "No, not entirely, for there is a war afoot on Daem, or at least there seemed to be, and it made quite a bit of trouble for me."