Free Black Jack by Rani Manicka Page B

born where both Earth and human consciousness will drastically change. This change is an event that happens once in many tens of millions of Earth years. The best way I can describe it to you is as a convergence of a great deal of odds, which will then emerge as several probabilities and some possibilities. One likelihood may alter human consciousness to rapidly emerge from its limited time-space illusion into a unified energy system. But, as always, with extreme opportunity comes danger.’
    ‘Danger?’
    ‘Mass extinction is one, but the key danger is that Earth will become what you see in the futuristic, dystopian, police state music videos that your elite love to produce, and you occasionally watch. Where humanity has been turned into a micro-chipped, half-human, half-robot slave population. Watched by telescreens and controlled by faceless police in riot gear they no longer think for themselves, but have been assimilated into the hive and act in the ‘greater good’.
    Black had watched and enjoyed music videos styled on just such themes, but it had never occurred to him to think of them as the propaganda arm of a harmful agenda deliberately propagated by ‘the elite’. He still didn’t. It was just entertainment. And it looked good.
    ‘There,’ Green continued, ‘are many moves afoot to sabotage the energy so that as many possibilities as possible remain unrealized. Your action, minute as it will be, is one of those random variables that may tip the odds in favor of humanity. Are you ready to begin?’
    Black did not take his eyes off the waiting expectant forms, some of them so bright they hurt his eyes. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Before we move to a place better suited for our needs, I have to ask. Would you like to remain in your bedclothes or shall we find something more appropriate?’
    Black looked down at his clothes. He had often wondered where his mother went to buy clothes with children’s motifs in his sizes. ‘Can I choose anything I want?’
    Green nodded.
    As soon as he thought of it, he was dressed in blue jeans tucked into a pair of cowboy boots, and an open-necked tan shirt.
    ‘Very nice. Ready?’
    Black nodded.
    ‘Hold on,’ Green said, and they were deposited on a bare, sun-torn landscape.
     

No man ever steps in the same river twice,
for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
     - Heraclitus
    Black looked around him in wonderment. ‘This is amazing. All my life I have dreamed of standing in a desert.’
    ‘Glad to please. Look to the west. We are not alone.’
    On a sand dune in the distance a lonely figure stood motionless beside his seated camel. He had lived in that furnace all his life and knew both the terrain and its inhabitants intimately. But always it had new secrets to share - a boy who appeared out of nowhere. He left his camel and began walking toward the boy, his robes billowing around him, the slip-face of the dune singing under his feet.
    ‘Can he see us?’
    ‘No one can see me, but you will be tangible to the rare adept. The ones who see even that which casts no shadow.’
    The man came to a stop six feet away from Black. He had a savagely beautiful face; deep-set, coal-black eyes and skin of pure leather. ‘On the way to somewhere else?’ he asked in a tribal dialect that Black shouldn’t have understood, but did.
    ‘I’m looking for an oasis,’ Black replied in English.
    The man pointed to the east. ‘Half an hour on foot.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    The man shaded his eyes against the blazing sun and said nothing. A small lizard moved on the hot sand. Black hesitated, feeling strangely reluctant to leave the desert wanderer. He had the strong sensation of wanting to touch him, in some way show kinship.
    ‘Your hand will go right through him,’ cautioned Green.
    ‘Will you tell me something important about the desert?’ Black asked instead.
    The man shrugged, his old face creasing. The flurry of lines brought forth a deeply mysterious smile; it