The Seven Days of Re-Creation

I’m heading down the main street in Cincinnati. I mean, nothing looks familiar to me anymore, and I’ve lived here thirty years. I suppose sometimes we can’t see what’s right in front of us too clearly as if we have dust on our eyes all along. Well I was walking down 4^th Street, and at the far end I could see the first of the two tallest buildings in the city, the Government Panopticon, which rose to a height of 30 stories and was equipped with heli-pad, radar receiver, transmitting beacon & antenna, as well as a network of cameras and microphones all over the city placed in inconspicuous public places. The better to keep an eye on us all.

But it’s just me, Steve Pissoir, and I am on my way to a very important date with a friend of mine who works over at the university between the government tower, and the Nollij Corporation tower.

The folks in the Nollij Corp. tower could give a rat’s ass for a toad like me, but what I want to do (with the help of my good friend) is to get a signal out, over the cosmos, using the radio telescopes of the university (tied together with seven other large array and wide beacon telescopes across the western hemisphere) as a transmitter to send a serious SOS from our planet to any civilization within earshot and get their help to preserve our living space before it all catches fire- as it has been doing for the past fifty years.

I don’t know about such things & all except that my friend at the university does, because he is an undergraduate exobiologist with a minor in astrophysics, and he is just as interested as I am in getting the word out, out of our society, out into the universe, where perhaps creatures of mercy can bring us to heal the planet….

I know, it sounds like I am whining. But you weren't there when the final ice shelf left Antarctica, and the last penguin croaked at Cape Horn, and the seagulls of Carlisle ate the rotted flesh of a hundred thousand Englishmen whose fortunes had been tied to the Humble river when it overran its banks and filled fifty thousand acres of cropland into desert of salt.

No I suppose you were not there.

But my friend and I, we need to work on this thing without the university or the government discovering we are doing this. Our network of other conspirators, for conspirators we indeed all are, across the globe are well aware of the risks we are taking and have left no stone unturned in keeping our work on this project undetected by an investigators or superiors or government agents…

Because we know that the government and Nollij Corporation are working together to keep the fires fueled, and keep all the cars fueled, and keep us all choking in an atmospheric soup of contaminated lead, ethyl and premium. I suppose I can’t let on even to you but I think you will believe me better once I get to the point of all of this.

Steve Pissoir, and I am on my way to the observatory at Cincinnati U. I can now see the tower of the Nollij Corporation, the people who instruct the world in what knowledge we are to know. They are the largest repository of the world’s information, but I know for a fact myself that they have kept a large portion of it hidden like an iceberg, deep in their AI brain’s recesses, and these truths are dangerous and self evident… someone wrote them long ago. If the government won’t try to contact the aliens out there, then it’s up to us.

I’m now passing Nollij Corp. Tower. The glass windows reflect a blue sky, blue in the ultramarine, rows of them, that continue on down the block and just three blocks away I’ll be able to meet up with Jorge.

Jorge Torremolinos, my partner in this grand cybercrime we aim to commit in the name of humanity, despite the thwarting bulking hide of the State thrust before us. Jorge, with his degree and recent work, has got connections to Chile and the Atacama VLA… along with our friend Pieter in Johannesburg, we have got the ability, once Jorge gets his Trojan horse into the mainframes of all three observatories, & we can focus X Kw of power to send our message out to the stars for exactly two and a half hours. Any longer, and there will definitely be feedback loops from inside each country’s national security cyber-defenses- they will not notice it is their own computer networks hijacking the world’s most powerful radio telescopes….

Such military secrecy! Well it had to be that way, since Jorge and I feel there is little to lose (but our lives and liberty!) and a world to gain for humanity if we succeed. That is, if we can even yet still regain our world. I don’t really know any longer if we have even a wing or a prayer to cast upon the waters but all I now is, that our government has not done a single thing but contribute to the general misery and malaise…

The government and the Nollij Corp both have a vested interest in keeping secret any contact information they might have about any visitors from outer space, any civilizations out there which might have -or might yet- attempt to contact us. The goal I think is to continue to shrink the population of earth through eugenics and possibly even cannibalism to get the earth back down into a sustainable population of humans. As it is now we have shore stacked on shores of humans distributed around the coasts of our continents, and every year more of them are forced to withdraw for higher ground, pushing the already burdened nation sates… but I digress. My mission comes first.

The University’s observatory is but a mere four and a half blocks from the Nollij Corp tower. It is entered through a small door on the side of an auditorium (actually, it’s the planetarium, but it serves its purpose for the student body to hold rock and roll concerts.)

Jorge’s office (and the telescope, and the controls) are just beneath this large congregating hall, and the signals are relayed by means of transmission wires to the antenna and satellite dish on the rooftop. Ingenious, actually, it was the best the university’s cash-strapped astronomy department could come up with. Whatever it is, it works.

And we are hoping to hijack the network. With 790.000 Megawatts of broadcast energy, the sum transmission, traveling at the speed of light, will reach the closest star at 6-11 light years. The next best habitable stars come in the 20-50 light year range. But if there’s anybody out there?

We are betting there is. The sheer number of viable exoplanets, Jorge assures me, is enough to wager the risk is low that we will perform a pure miss, and nothing will come of our efforts, except, perhaps for all of us, a term in our local prisons.

Here’s Jorge, and here I am, and I hand him the slip on which I have written the message we will be broadcasting in binary formula out in hopes… we can reach… them.

Hello! Please understand who we are, we need help! Come to our star and help us- our planet is choking and we need oxygen and other elements to mitigate our existence! Help! Please come soon!

You will never believe what happened next, but I am here today to tell you. Within three hours of our shutting off the transmitters and resuming our nonchalant roles in our respective countries Jorge, Pieter in South Africa, and Alejandro in Chile had gone back into our regular everyday positions, I in finance, and them just turning their backs in their white coats - within three hours the most amazing things happened.

First, the sun hung in the sky at about 2:00. It remained at 2:00 for more than fifteen minutes, then, a half hour, then, for yet another hour it had remained in that one spot in the sky. All the world seemed to come to a halt, as people everywhere could not help but notice that the sun had stopped. Taxis and freight trucks ground to a halt, horns bleated, tempers flared. Road rage broke out simultaneously in over fifteen states on seventeen federal interstate highways.

It was as if the sun had become a magnifying glass, and we humans were little ants.

Smoke and steam poured forth from the exhaust flumes of over three hundred coal fired power plants in the Eastern Seaboard grid. One by one, these began to black out. With that black out, lights and electrical outlets all over the east coast went out too. Stereos and computers died. Radios fell silent.

It was but the beginning.

There was a great sound like thunderclaps, and, lest you think I but jest, the sound of a thousand trumps blowing in great arpeggios of glory. How else can it be said. And we saw it.

It was just like more than a hundred science fiction movies, above us all in the sky, a gigantic alien spacecraft. It had lights all about the perimeter, and- cross my heart if I am lying to you- it had a little ramp that came down, and down that little ramp walked a little man, clothed in a simple robe, and from it the music that was playing as he came down the steps- something like a country-funk rythmn & blues bop shuffle- he was snapping his fingers and grooving. And I swear to god it was like a hundred angels came down out that spaceship behind him, trailing their clouds of glory, and we all knew who He was.

It was up to Him to announce himself, though. All the world stood still in awe. Just as the sun, now freed again, continued on its way down the horizon, so did the Son of Man return to the planet he had called home 2000 years ago, but that prophecy should actually come true? Had the Messiah actually come just at the time when we of the scientific community had been asking for help from any outside force, here it was in all its force right in our faces?

My God, I said to Jorge in a text message, I think this is the Second Coming of… Jesus Christ.

About twenty minutes later, I get a knock on my door.

I go to it…

and shit, there’s Jesus!

“Steve Pissoir?”

“Yes?”

“Steve, I’m here in answer to your message.”

“But but, yes?”

“But nothing. Hey, I bet you get a lot of shit about your name, hunh?

“Um. I think I am used to it by now, yeah...”

“Well hey, anyway. Look- see what we gotta do-”

“Yes?”

“What we gotta do is, we gotta have a Press Conference!”

“A what? And blow our cover?”

“”No, I got your backs! C’mon. We gotta have a press conference so the leaders of your planet know this shit’s come down for real!”

“I- yeah, right, I guess.. we gotta… Yeah, OK, what do you need me to do?”

“Go to your university there and get the Astronomy Department head to be present at our conference. We’ll present the case just like it was some kind of scientific event, you dig?”

“Umm… sure.. uh”

“And who is not to take us seriously anyway! You know who I am, come on!”

It was obvious that if Jesus himself was in on our conspiracy I had to concede perhaps we were invulnerable. It might have been a mistake, but I guess it was just a step I had to take.

I called Alejandro.

Alejandro Tiene, our man at Atacama. He was in charge of a program checking for the Hubble Constant amongst a number of Messier objects which had been classified first as white dwarfs, but we now considered to be “sub atomic neutron fissile factories”- happening about ever 16 parsecs or so across the sky…

Anyway Alejandro was the brain who got the link up happening with the telescopes becoming a transmitter, and his job and ass were as much on the line as any of us. In fact, it was really possible his government cold pursue an espionage case against him, if the hacking were discovered.

But as Jesus said, he’s got our backs…

“Are you kidding, man? It’s all over the tv and the radio down here, man! -That bigass old alien space craft? Esta Jesu Christos, los Salvador del mundo! I know it, too!

I turned to Jesus. “You see? He already believes!”

“Tell him, we have to coordinate...”

“I know, I know, a press conference! OK -I am now posting to the University Bulletin board--- and also to several local television outlets, and a couple of national and international… carbon copies, you dig… We can face the reporters at… 4:00? OK?”

“OK. That will be fine…

“I will be available on sat link whenever you want me...”

Alejandro had a pleasant, happy boy expression on his face as I blinked off the stare-screen.

“Roger”

OK, so we have about an hour to get ready,” said Jesus. “I suggest you hold it in the concert hall upstairs...’

“You mean, the planetarium.”

“No, I mean the concert hall. That’s the only function it will have for the duration as long as Dad and I are in charge...”

“Dad?”
“Dad?”

“Yes,. You know. The Almighty. Our Father. You didn’t think I was just gonna try and set this up by myself again, did you, after what happened to me the last time?”

“Umm, OK, right. But please explain...”

“Yes?
“So many questions! Sorry, I cannot actually think straight enough right now to ask you the right one…

think of an important one to ask...h- how did you hear our message?

“Hear? You think we needed to hear it? But, me and Dad been working on you guys for a whiles now. We sort of have a “6^th sense”, you might say, of when and where we’re needed most...”

“Ahh,,,”

“But just one thing. You know, we can’t just keep coming here and bailing you guys out like this all the time! You need to learn and take the lessons to heart, because we can’t always be here for you!”

“Hmmm...”

“Does it make sense?”

“Yes. But … What are you going to do?”

“You’ll see. Let’s get the press job set up.”

The University’s Public Address crew spun into action, setting up a table, a dais, a large flat screen pulled down from the back wall, stanchions around the sage to hold back the reporters, most of whom would leave that space for the cameramen. At 3:$5 the first reporters began showing up. Me, Jorge, and JC were all seated at the table, to begin.

I rose to the dais.

“Good afternoon, members of the press. I’m sure all of you have many questions, but I’ll explain, first.

“My name is Steven Pissoir...” (Immediately, several reporters began laughing and choking on their coffee. The slight disturbance was like a ripple in the little room.)

I began again.

“My name is Steven Pissoir, and I am just a bank clerk for Frosteez. But I had a vision one day that I would be called upon to send a message out across space, to some superior civilization, to come to our aid and help us with our great current climate catastrophe. My partner here, (I pointed to Jorge) -is an exoplanetary biologist who works here at the university. We set up a satellite link with our brother in Chile, Alejandro Tiene, who will soon be joining us on the wide screen above and behind me.

“We sent a transmission just three hours ago, toward the area of the sky where we know the nearest habitable stars are. We know it was an abrogation of our duties as paid employees of science agencies and universities, but we felt that -in the absence of any action by our governments- that it would be up to us to try and get this SOS out. And look what happened.”

“Much to our surprise, the result is what you have seen here today-

“It is my proud pleasure to introduce to you, the man many of you have been waiting for all these years, as did your parents and your parent’s parents parents… without further ado, Mr. Jesus Christ!”

There was a mixture of baffled humor, shock, awe, and even a little applause, which I swear had not been planned but apparently, the campus PA guys had cued up just especially for the moment.

Now, Jesus took the dais. His hair was immaculately curled into dreadlocks, and a bright orange-yellow halo nimbus surrounded his head. He had a great wide smiling grin on his face, and his eyes- well, they sparkled, sparkled like trillions of star-seeds would launch from their orbit.

“Hi, y’all”

A pregnant silence followed, interrupted by the coughs of some newsmen. He was obviously stalling until he had their full attention.

“Hi, y’all. You know, it’s been a while, huh? Last time I came by you were all in a horrible way about what’s sacred & what not, & I thought me & Dad had fixed you all up, with Moses and Noah and the boys, but you didn’t get the point.

“-I did. No, sorry, I meant that as a joke.

“See, from where we are outside of space time, you would think we do not hear your prayers, your cries for mercy, when you are in pain, on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and more?
“Well, of course we do. Me and Dad… well I know you have more questions about “last time,” but I am not here today to answer any of them. I am here to help you NOW.”

There was silence, more coughing and muttering in the press corps, and then he turned to the screen behind us and pointed to Alejandro’s face, which had as wide a grin as his own, and dominated the entire back wall of the hall.

“This man here, Alejandro of , is the first of you to acknowledge my authority. As such, I will make him and his friends here-” he nodded at us, staring at our shoes, or fidgeting with a water glass-

“My deputies in the great project we have ahead of us, which is called, once again, coming-to-help-you fix your-mistakes.” Jesus he could be sarcastic!

"A lot of you are not going to like what we're going to do next, but, lest ye see miracles, ye would not believe…."

There was silence in the hall for a minute or two, since nobody knew what to expect, and since nothing happened in the hall, it just made the reporters all more nervous.

But this is what happened. We later called it “La Milagro de los Autos” because of what it was, and how sudden it was, and how it affected… all of us.

Across the planet, motorists who were just tootling along merrily one moment were sprawled out on the pavement the next, 2 billion bottoms scraping asphalt, their automobiles… gone.

From the dais, Jesus now continued.

“Like I said, some of you will not like it, but Dad and I decided this was the most important thing all of you could do, and none of you wanted to do it, so we were forced to put it upon you all. I know, many of you are without your radios now… but we will allow the use of cell phones for the next three days in order for you to contact your family, your friends, and your business associates as to what you are going to have to do next...”

Jesus stepped aside, and came over to my chair to whisper.

“Allow Alejandro to talk to them for a while, it will keep them distracted. We got a big problem going on with this, and I am sure Dad wants me to be available...”

I got back up and turned the wire over to Alejandro.

“Greetings my brothers and sisters!”

Across the planet, those who were on the streets now, their belongings somehow left in place, but their automobiles now missing, began to form up in groups around those with radios and cellphones.

“Jesus is back!”
“Jesus did that?”

“Jesus Christ- that goddam motherfucker, where’s my fucking truck! I had a load to get to the East Coast by tomorrow, now my boss will kill me!”
“Let’s organize!

“Yeah!”

And on freeways around the globe, these strange, bedraggled armies of commuters, pleasure travelers, day-to-day deliverymen, and big rig drivers formed into long lines and...walked their ways back home.

“Greetings, Brothers and Sisters. We are on the cusp of a great new astrological age! Those of you of other faiths, be assured, we are not going to persecute you for your ways. Nor even you, atheists. But just rest in faith that El Salvador is going to help us, and this is all for the good, esta bueno, si? We will all get along! After all this is the New Kingdom…”

Alejandro’s connection must have broke, because the screen behind us clicked black.

Jesus stepped back up the dais.

“Yes, this is the New Kingdom of which I once spoke, in another mind, but it is also a work in progress, and it always was. Those of you who are missing your cars… I know, I know, I can see you even now, in your legions, marching homeward so you can go get your weapons and come after me with your pitchforks…

“But I already paid that burden for you once, and I will not again. I want you to know you WILL all be compensated! What you should be doing now is, go home, get your shit together, and wait for our next phase. This will begin as soon as Dad and I are assured that there will be no insurrections among ye.

“Insurrectionists will be rooted out and cast unto the bottomless pit! Heh heh heh.”

I could not but wonder- but of course, God and Jesus are authoritarians! Why, they are the highest authority, how could they but not be! Was all the philosophical wondering over “free will” and “determinism” now all moot? It looked like the boss was back. But rather than being mad, he seemed…more like gently amused.
Nonetheless, they often warned me that fascism might come wearing a happy face mask and waving a handkerchief someday…

I could only wonder what he means by the next step...

What was going on inside the planetarium was not passing unnoticed by the powers that be, either in the Panopticon, or the HQ building of the Nollij Corp.

Inside, bureaucrats, investigators, detectives, cops, generals and squares were all debating how they should respond to the gigantic seizure of power by “the God Bros” as one Pentagon wag called them.

“What the fuck are we doing messing around? Send in a SWAT team!”

Actually, they did attempt it, but when the SWAT team arrived at the university planetarium, they were met with a strange occurrence. Every single one of them collapsed on the floor outside the auditorium door, laughing and jagging into fits of euphoria. Dropping their weapons and laid back, spaced-out, against the walls, they resembled none so much as victims of an LSD-dosing experiment undertaken by someone else’s army.

So that did not work.

Over at the Nollij Corp, where Splendor Bendix ruled everything with an iron fist and burrito-filled glove, he saw his own blood pressure begin to spike as the teletype gave him a careening stock market and just like that, Seven trillion dollars had been debited from his estate. Rather than commit suicide, Bendix decided that he would have his revenge as well on the “God Bros” in due time.

But even Bendix was not prepared to see the entire financial structure of the planet earth, all its intricate networks of trusts and financials and regurgitables and vegetables disappear, Just like the cars had. Sent into another dimension, Poof.

Which was what Jesus had meant when he said “our next step...”

The press conference broke up with the reporters yelling and screaming madly for Jesus to comment or answer a question, but JC had already split and headed back down into Jorge’s lab. There, me and Jorge found him later in the afternoon, his feet propped up against the back another chair, arms folded behind his head, and that same shit-eating grin plastered all over his face.

“See how they like it now.. no cars, no money… no more rat race!”

I smiled. I knew I had to talk to him a little more about the speed of these things taking shape, but he seemed so pleased I dared not disturb him.

I stuck my hand down the pocket of my jeans and where I last remembered having some change, it was there no more. Just like Him, I thought, he’s gone and disappeared all the money too. Just like the cars. Are these really miracles for our own good? Or will civilization collapse? I gotta try and stay on his side though- never know if he might even decide to throw me to the bottomless pit.

He let us rest up, and I did that at my own home, walking there as I did, surrounded by dozens of other people, some of whom lived nearby, and most who did not. It was a funny feeling walking amongst all my fellow people, and none of us had a dime in our pockets. Like, the world could go on, and somehow, even us humans with nothing left at all- no car, no money, maybe you saved the coffee mug from the last car trip and are wearing it like a pilgrim’s badge by now-

But every single man and woman on the streets had been suddenly de-statused, or perhaps, I hoped, “re-statused”- as would be the primary idea behind a move like this by Jesus and Dad.

I sort of resented not having the money or the wealth any longer. Now, we were all just serfs in Jesus great kingdom though I am sure he would rather prefer to call us his sheep.

Sheep or not, I know there are still plenty wolves out there. Like, Splendor Bendix and his crew, and all those long haul truckers out there who sat, defiantly, beside their cargo loads, as they waited for company representatives to come, inventory the goods, and release them back to their family and homes.

Where, just like everyone else, there was not even a single article to be found related to the fossil fuel industry.

From nowhere, thousands of kitchen sinks had their underside cabinets scoured of plastic bleach bottles, garbage bags, weed killers, and air fresheners. Everyone would still have their phones, but sure as shit, I knew that, come tomorrow, Jesus would be up and at ‘em early in the morning wanting to get the new Kingdom off on a good foot for the First day.

On the First Day, the Food Panic had set in almost immediately. Once all those multitudes formed their long lines off the freeways and began their homeward treks, those who’d been waiting for their return panicked. No car! Most then began walking for their local supermarkets, and predictably, these started selling out their stocks before closing, Many shopkeepers marked up signs reading “Closing- Permanently” but were shocked, when in the morning, they returned to their shops to begin the process of making the adjustments, when they saw their shelves had all been mysteriously resupplied! There was nothing amiss, at all… except.. the food was all “generic”- there were only a little tag at the end of a bag, or on a box, to tell what it was, although every item was in the exact place that the display merchants had slotted it.

It was truly a miracle…

As for those multitudes on the highways, overnight, Jesus had sent out an army of angels armed with reusable water flasks and loaves of bread, (and cookies!) at way stations along the roads There was no reason anyone with a healthy body could not return to their abode within a day or two, and unless they were far from home, there was no problem.

Jesus keeping the cellphones on for longer than he first had planned had something to do with the fact that, by the end of the third day, there were very few cases of madness, insurrection, or disgruntledness.

Except, of course, in the halls of Power.

On that first morning, when I had finished my last cup of specialty Columbian coffee, and had steeled my mind for the worst, I headed back to Jorge’s office, which of course, was now the command post and HQ for all of the Good Lord’s Earthly Operations.

He was seated in the same chair, in the same way, with the same smile on his face, when I entered. Only behind him now, standing, with stern looks on their faces, were two large angels.

“Steve, meet Gabe and Mike. They’re my bodyguards...”

“Umm, how do you do?”

They stood silently and only nodded in my direction, an indifferent acknowledgment, I felt.

“We did get some overnight reports about some problems, mostly those interstate truck drivers. What a tough breed they are! I can understand how inconvenienced they must all feel. Listen, I sent out squads to every large disturbed region- you know, the ones where there’s the most freight just lying out on the road, you know? Told them that my angels will guard the shit so nobody can rip them off. Then I sent all the truckers home. That sort of nipped their anger in the bud. They weren’t happy with the loss of their wallets, either, but, I assured them that their wages will be made up, when we have the final edge of the operation functional. And you, too- you will miss your coffee, too, I know! But hey- remember what I said now! Take no worry for where or how you shall eat or what your raiment shall be, alright? We’re all gonna be in this together, and every last jot and tittle will be accounted.

“Now Steve, I want you to be my ambassador, intermediary, or whatever you want to call yourself, to these others, the seven billion of you here on this little blue rock of stardust.

“You are my PR guy, my go to for questions of which of course, I might know the answer, but, maybe also I don’t, you know? Being only half-human and half-Holy Ghost, I can’t actually see past a certain fog in my own perspective...”

“Got a log in your eye?”

“Ha, ha. No really, there are things you will have more familiarity with, you know? I only get to check in here every couple of thousand years, and while Dad’s crystal ball shows him and me a lot some days it’s all cloudy… too many bad vibes going on here with you guys all fighting between yourselves! When the problem here is Everyone’s. Can you grok that?

I grokked. It was one thing for Jesus to be an omnipotent omniscient being able to create miracles at will, it was another for him to be a visitor and just a visitor to Planet Earth. Clearly someone who understood decorum, diplomacy, and the various madnesses of Earthlings would need to handle the job he was pegging on me.

I sighed. It was gonna be a long week.

Splendor Bendix, as his name implied, was a man born to opulence and convenience, and used to having his way. As he stared at the blank screen on his desktop PC, while it still existed, (it had not been transformed into some hyper-string dimension, as the automobiles) It did not seem to function.

While the power light went on, the screen remained blank, dark. He pulled out his cell phone and punched the fast dial number that would summon up the phone of Fenstermeier, his number 2 and CFO of the Nollij Corp.

There was no answer

There was not even a ring.

For all intents and purposes, the hour had come “of which no man shall know.”

The cell phones of billions were now not much better than cheap storage banks for their pictures and videos.

Jesus, I knew, had anticipated this new panic, too. Because, in fact, everything which had relied on either a satellite relay or “the cloud” (as it was quaintly referred to four decades past) was non-functional. And might as well have been just another piece of junk to clutter up the landscape.

“Goddamn those fucking GOD BROS!” he stormed, tossing a paperweight so hard against the glass front wall of his office that it shattered into a pile of fragments.

A secretary came running at the sound.

“Is anything wrong, Mr Be- uh -oh- OH!”
She stared at the pile of glass.

“Yes, Diane, something is. Everything is broken!”

He kicked hard at the pile of shards, stopping just before the tongue of his shoe slipped beneath a large one.

“Can’t do well without my foot now, can I?”

Splendor Bendix- fifty five years old, captain of industry, the picture of health, wealth, and success, once known as “the richest man in the world” (before his company was forced to cede certain patents to the Government Panopticon) -reduced to mining cryptocurrency for the past three days and nights as he attempted in any way possible to recoup his treasure…

Was now without even that remedy for his anxious and bitter greed.

He paused.

“Is your cell phone working, Diane?”

She checked.

“Why, no!”

“Thought so. Looks like the GOD BROS have struck again, Goddamnit!!!!”

“We’re now well into getting the heavy lifting over with...”

Jesus smiled.

I stood in front of Him, Gabe and Mike looked rather bored, but at certain points in the conversation, they might nod, shake their heads, or in some way let me know that they actually did take note of my presence.

“Yes, the heavy lifting is over. My Family Reunification Squads have been busy the last couple days, but they report that everyone’s back home, safe and sound. Of course, nobody liked it that first night, when there wasn’t any food left in the stores. But the shopkeepers all sang a different tune Wednesday didn’t they?”

Freed from the bondage of money, most communities now reverted to the barter system, or the shopkeepers, attended by other angels, would distribute food to all and any who wanted it. Some greedy people tried stockpiling it, but it was soon obvious there was no need for that. Every morning the shelves magically refilled by themselves. Nobody was hungry or thirsty.

Of course, being all generic products, nobody could get Just Exactly what they were used to, but the absence of competition in the food industry actually hurt nobody but the market research and advertising industries, who had made their own fortunes picking on small differences which were, for the most part, so miniscule to begin with, that having all the food be “generically packaged” presented no real issues.

Most of the world’s population, in fact, were happy campers now. Had Jesus been a politician, I am sure everyone would have elected him King, at that point!

He laughed again.

“So now we are into the other phase. Now that we have the worst of your -madnesses- controlled, we’ll get to work on the- Chemical Problems.”

From what I could tell, Gabe & Mike weren’t just JC’s bodyguard’s- or obvious “heavy muscle”. It turned out they were in charge of the millions of angels who now composed the world’s police force.

The nation-states, powerless now in the face of the Divine Authority, were doubly confused and insulted why the fact that, around the same time the cell phones had all disappeared, so had all insignia of rank on uniforms, medals, & standards of Officialdom. There was left in fact, only one flag- that of the United Nations. Some of its appointed representatives took issue and umbrage with this. For what had all these smaller nations combined into the USA’s One Hundred Stars to begin with, if not to enjoy the rights and privileges granted by the US Constitution?

“I didn’t come all the way here just to pay my obesiance to the Ten Commandments and the United Nations Bill of Rights,” thundered the ambassador from USA/France.

“It’s also insulting that we have had to ditch our free markets for this undiluted- Communism!” echoed his USA/UK counterpart.

Part of their problem was that with all those angels watching the highways for “poachers,” they were also on nearly every street corner doing good deeds, like, helping old ladies across the street, preventing stray dogs from being bullied or tortured, watching over children on their way to school- it was also noted inside the great Government Panopticon- just nine blocks away from where we were, at Jesus’ HQ- that the angels apparently had a better take on mass surveillance (as well as the local kind) that the business of the government keeping tabs on everyone was now redundant.

As they lunched, lonely in their cubicles, the employees of the Nollij Corp. had their own beefs.
“Now there’s a greater intelligence at work than even our own AI!”

As it turned out JC’s “Chemical Problem Project” would involve much more than a gang of angels and omnipotent wisdom. JC needed some actual scientific help, and he got it.

Remember Pieter in South Africa? (Almost forgot about him- you thought!) He was called on by JC to do some leg work by traveling to Antarctica and taking measurements there of the ozone hole, as well as an atmospheric examination. How quickly was JC’s “oxygen insertion” taking hold in the lower atmosphere, and how soon would the actual CO2 /ppm measurements fall back to the level that JC, Dad, and all the angels sought? (This had been fixed at 1790 AD, a reasonable enough place, thought JC, before autos or the practical applications of electricity…)

It so happened that the employees of Nollij Corp, disallowed their usual lunches of catered food of high and mighty artsy-fartsy cuisine, now forced to eat generically wrapped tuna sandwiches and fruit salads, sent a memo to their boss complaining about the loss of morale it had engendered.

When Bendix got it, he agreed.

“This bullshit about the grocery stores is too much. We have to have a way to get back to the way things were, to monetize appetite, and have diversity in menu choice again! There’s got to be a way I can manipulate everyone under our platform into choosing our way over the God Bros!
“Hmm. Maybe if I had a chip they could implant into the consumers, that would allow them access to the things they’re used to having again, they would all go for it. For who wants this generic crapola every day anyway! I don’t! And I like my oatmeal to be made from steel cut rolled oats, not whole oats! Even if they are organic!”

So it was, that Bendix announced the new chip, and anyone who wanted one could come to the Nollij Corp building and get one implanted, for free.

Of course, there would be a monthly usage fee. Six dollars and Sixty Six cents. And that since Jesus had suspended monetary currency, Bendix said that the Nollij Corp would hold all these usage fees in abeyance, until either the “Tyranny of the God Bros is overthrown, or we’re all cast into the Bottomless Pit.”

Most citizens, being unaware of how the Bottomless Pit actually functioned (one could not arrive there unless Jesus himself had adjudicated it, on a case by case basis) were afraid enough of it, but there was, yet, a sizable portion of the population for whom all these changes wrought by the New Kingdom At Hand were the worst things that might ever have happened.

Not just Splendor Bendix, but, speaking of your average man in the street. After so many centuries and generations of humans coming and going, leaving their descendants a world that was exponentially more complicated than before, the loss of -free movement (no cars) free markets (generic foodstuff!) and no tv, computers, or cell phones (No social media! No business!) they had, in fact, begun to organize. And the same emotions displayed by the long haul truckers were patched onto every fifth man in the nation, and his children and dog as well. Everyone who got the implant was now marked, in more ways than one.

For those who had accepted the Bendix/Nollij Corp offer, they met with scorn and derision from the angel guardians on their block. Everywhere they went they would be subjected to laughter, for the angels could tell who had the chip and who didn’t, with merely a glance. And the citizens who had gone under to the angels would merely go about their business as nothing occurred otherwise, for they were happy in their material guarantees already, and saw nothing but oddness in the ones who deemed to make trouble for JC, Dad, and their Plan…

On the Fifth Day, Jesus met with me in the planetarium HQ office.

“Steve, I gotta really good one for you today. Today’s the day we put in my own public address system. We’re going to be checking it out at...” He looked at the clock on the wall...”10:00, just three more minutes. While we wait why don’t we go over some of the stuff I’ll be layin’ down in our first broadcast...”

I looked at him. That same smile, those same shining, confident eyes. The halo about his head that was really only his aura, but which always seemed so magnificently radiant… radiating serenity and an easy seductive calm.

“One. I did not really want to involve Mom in this project, but, seeing as she’s really just a sort of keep-to-herself sort of person, but she insisted. Mom’s in charge of all the… Other Animals.

“You see, ever since the time of Noah you guys have actually had all the advantages. Who’s to speak for all the other species here?

“Mom decided she had to be the one, and Dad, he just said, OK and went along.

“Mom’s put everything else except you guys on the Endangered Species Act list, and THEY are being protected by angels now, too. But we’re working on letting you guys gradually bring their populations down, when we are talking about your usual food stock species- chickens, cows, pigs, fish you know. Eventually, in another year, you will all be vegetarians, but, you can’t really blame me for that.

“Anyway you can still get your ground beef down at the store for a while yet.”

“But is it grass fed? I asked I knew immediately he could easily see through me and take me for a fool.

“Of course, silly, just like the organic whole oat oatmeal!”

“Two, we have adjusted your atmosphere to a particular point in your past. You guys better not blow it this time! And start all that crap back up again! Mom promises punishment anyway for those who molest or torture draft animals, or who fin sharks, and as it is, there’s too few of the actual Endangered Ones left to sustain them much longer, unless our changes can help them too.

“Everyone’s got to work together to keep it together this time!

“OK!

“10:00!”

At ten, it was the most amazing sound. Louder (or loud as) a jet takeoff, it began with a sweetly pitched note like a flute, which revved into a very low note as from millions of horns in the lower registers. But then he spoke.

“Testing- one two, check, check...”

The voice was coming from every point in the sky and was heard everywhere!

(Alejandro, on the stare-screen, gave Jesus the A-OK sign with his thumb and forefinger. JC was transmitting to those other stars we had tried so hard to reach!

Angels had been hard at work in this “Oxygen Insertion” program. For it had not been just brought in, from God Knows Where, but they were busy planting trees and grasses in many places which had not seen them for centuries, like the Sahara and Gobi deserts, the tundra lands of Siberia and Alaska, and even so far south as Tierra Del Fuego. Everywhere where new plant life could be set in, so it was done, for the only real exceptions were those mountainous regions which had never had enough topsoil to sustain them to begin with, and they filled in the gaps in the Amazon Rainforest.

Pieter was overjoyed with the results. From his phone in Antarctica, he spoke to us on the stare-screen.

“Hey, Steve! Hi Jesus! Hey- look, I think this is going to work. In just the past 24 hours we have seen the ppm’s shoot up over 4000 percent! I think we’re all on the right track finally now!
Jesus looked at me and again smiled, that smile.

“So Steve, looks like this is almost a done deal now, eh?”
“I’d like to think so, and so would you, but there’s still these forces...”

“Oh, you mean the Incorrigible Ones? (this was his new nickname for all the Bendix-types with the chip implants & the $6.66/mo memberships)- “that’s nothing. Listen we can have off with them in a matter of another day.”

“What do you propose to do?
Well, since I ‘d probably be up all night checking the process papers on each one of them, I tell you, I’m farming that work out again to Gabe and Mike. They’ve done such a swell job already...”

“But Splendor Bendix? Isn’t he a power to be reckoned with?”
Amazing how scared you all are of this one dude! Sheesh. Anyway, no, do not fret, like I said, his day will come. And soon.”

It was at that point I shrugged OK and turned, and again headed back to my place, where I could at least have a cup of generic coffee (Mountain Grown- the richest kind!) and a few pieces of toast.
I wondered just how he was going to do it. The next day- Day Six- I brought back the same question.

“So what are you going to do about Bendix?”

“I would not be so worried! Listen, most of his “chippies” are actually willing to come over to our side, all they need is the right encouragement, and to see the error of their ways. Of course there’s quite a lot of them who would refuse to leave behind the old ways. But when has that ever stopped human progress, huh?

“Perhaps the time has come to give Mr Bendix his justice due. I seem to think there are a lot of things about how you all thought we were going to act when we came back, which are highly amusing to us and not at all necessarily what we mean to do. For no man could know that, not even John the Writer. No, I suppose the time has come to uproot the evil branch. I summon him before me this next hour!”

Gabe and Mike were off in a flash to go apprehend Splendor Bendix. Sitting in his now valueless penthouse, stripped of class status and just another Neighbor on the Street, he knew when the angels came to get him that this was not gonna be good. I didn’t really want to stick around for the interrogation & all, knowing while Jesus would not resort to torture on poor Bendix, but that in his mercy he was bound to let Bendix himself decide if the Bottomless Pit was for him, I split back to the pad for a highball and a joint. The rest of the day would probably be all taken up with tribunals and angel kangaroo courts, and I figured the best thing to do would be to hide out, kick back. And dig the new world order in my own way, out of the way of all that angel action going on outside.

For sometimes even that would break into my solitude as morning turned to afternoon. There were screams, yes, but these were only individuals not masses huddled together as such went to the Nazi death ovens. I knew that out there, individual rebels were coming up against angels, but always finding themselves defenseless against them, no matter what sort of weapon they meant to take them on with. And it was not gonna look too good if when they got to Jesus himself, the o so bad ones, they had a 50 50 chance of the bottomless pit, lest they chose it as a means of suicide.

Which was what Splendor Bendix did. Nobody missed him when he left us all, and even if he had not been the great Antichrist of the Patmos island scribe but just another greedy capitalist slob underneath it all, the choice he made to jump into the Pit was one offered by Jesus not as a condemnation, but a protest of Splendor Bendix’s free will.

“So it goes, my dear friends,” Jesus thundered out through the clouds. When all is said and done, the best plans of mice and men come to naught, eh? That’s why the changes we are making include allowing the Other Animals even twice the predatory powers they had over you. I’d be more afraid of taking in house cats from here on out, if I was you, since we have the bird populations to think of.

“You wouldn’t want to go the way of the passenger pigeon yourself, would you, O Man?

“I think sometimes back to the days when I was here last. When I spoke of not the water but the fire next time, I meant that, the fire is your air! And so. I was warning y’all. I had no idea it was Dad’s plan all along to make me die like that back then, but since those days, me and him have gotten to be good buds, like a good father son relationship. Sorry to have seemed so pathetic and disraught at the end on the cross, but, if Dad hadn’t sent me that message of “tough love,” I don’t think we’d be the good pals we are today.”

It was late afternoon. They’d spent most of the day tossing evildoers into the Bottomless Pit, and the angels had started up talent shows in the neighborhoods which had been most particularly afflicted by thugs, miscreants, and plain ornery a-holes. They’d finished mopping up and now they wanted to party. Kids were break-dancing on street corners and tabletops, karaoke singers croaked calypsos of palpitating hearts, and wannabe folk singers sang odes to the moon, the stars, and the planets. You could even hear echoes of it though JC’s cosmic PA!

The angels partied on well late into the night. You could hear the shouts of joy, random blasts of trumpets, loud guitars and drums, tribal dances, and choirs of hosannas. I ventured out for a short stroll and the neighborhood parties were all really swinging by then. Everywhere I went there were crowds in the streets, celebrating with wine and beer and an ever changing array of costume and mummery. Would this be what our future looked like? I wondered about how he meant we’d “all be vegetarians within a year, but that’s none of my doing?” Whose would it be then? Were the animals going to bully everyone into it? That was certainly a possibility, but I also considered that the Other Animals also now had the Holy Mother and all the angels on their side. If there had been a cosmic police force, then they were it, and it did feel to me like things were definitely going to be different in the days ahead. And Jesus’ idea to give everyone who’d lost a car a free bike! What did he think that would do, when so many who had loved their cars were still a little more than wary of his motives?

I couldn’t spend much time though on the future. He’d set it all up so that I’d have to be the one to explain it all to everybody, and I suppose I just surrendered to the idea when I returned home and began jotting things down in the order they’d need to be addressed, when he’d ask me to take them all before the folks at the Panopticon and the Nollij Corp Tower. Now those two buildings loomed ahead in my life again, and it wasn’t because I chose them. I guess He chose Me...



And on the Seventh Day, He rested.

On Bicycling 2

     Well I figured I would take a little time and revisit the topic, since the last time I wrote about this, I was still beholden to my analog bike (a Raleigh Mojave 2.0 mountain bike) - I upgraded in late 2016 to an Emazing Daedalus, which served me well until earlier this year, when an inept mechanic made it generally un-serviceable & the need arose to replace it (with a sister bike, the Emazing Artemis).
     The first of these two had a throttle-only setup, but the new one has pedal assist, and it's a wonderful help. I should note that, since acquiring an electric bike, my trouble with my knees (always aggravated by what few spills or mishaps I'd be recovering from) got much less, in fact, the electric has given me Years of Life to my knees which otherwise it would not have...
     My daily commute generally is 16 miles a day, which is easily handled by the bike's range (18-20) and speed (I've come close to 22 tops). Half of that is uphill, half of that is downhill. The trouble with the commute is that is happens twice a day (4 miles per trip) and that was just more than my poor knees could take, on an "analog" bike. I was constantly in a state of recovery and/or strain, and having to chug uphill twice a day- morning and afternoon- was certainly as much work as the chore I had to get to. Which is, being a school crossing guard, at a pretty dangerous expressway intersection with a blind corner, in Los Altos California.
     Working there I get to see behavior of the best, and worst, kinds, performed by drivers in a town which is probably the highest-rent and income zip code in the entire nation. Many of these people do drive like they are indeed "entitled" even if their entitledness amounts to merely blowing through  a guy with a handheld stop sign trying to protect their neighbors' children from their bad driving & attitudes.
     The attitudes in America still are very much auto-centric ones. A pedestrian, or a person on a bike for that matter, are still not seen as relevant and deserving respect as are other motorists, apparently. For all their civic crowing about "bicycle friendliness", towns like Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Los Altos are still full of "high-minded professionals" who want to get out on the freeways just as fast as they can, damn all the torpedoes, come morning's rush hour.

     As a bicyclist I have had my share of these sorts of comments-
     "You're too old for that bike anyway- "
(like it's anybody's business what someone else of any age does for transportation)
      "You're not a car-"
(Because I want to cut my corners here on my left turn, and you are too far out in to your own left turn lane that I will ram you the hell over if you don't respect my idiotic ego)
     "I ride a bike too, bro, so can you move over so I can turn?"
     "Wait your turn! Right now, you're just another asshole in a car!"
     (No I didn't actually say that, but maybe I should have.)

     The "war" between auto-motorists and bicyclists is apparently not over, and maybe never will, until bicyclist finally outnumber the folks in cars... But I try not to escalate it myself.
Lots of bike books will tell you "make eye contact with drivers!"
But-
that eye contact often is just what keeps the wars simmering. I prefer to make eye contact only to make sure a car turning out sees me approaching, and ring my bell. I go out of my way to be the LAST possible thing someone is going to run into on the road, and would rather you pass me up than have someone sitting "on my six" for five minutes, because I hate hearing things coming up in back of me. I always bike defensively and take these words of caution.

     "There are a lot of old bicyclists, and there are a lot of bold bicyclists.
      But there are not very many old, bold bicyclists..."
   
     You stay out of my way and I will stay out of yours, OK?
     Happy Trails.

AVAILABLE NOW!

By the Waters of Oblivion
a novel by Mark Lind-Hanson

available at Smashwords.com
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/952677

By the Waters of Oblivion is set in ancient India at during the lifetime of Gautama Buddha, although it concerns another, distant prince. Padmarana shocks his royal mother and father by taking a noncaste woman musician to wife, although unbeknownst to them all, she is a reincarnated apsara, a semi-divine individual bestowed with deva-like powers for transformation of earthly society. Padmarna's adoption of Buddhist principles brings him into an unprecedented situation as his former rival country's King attempts to create a unified state.

By the Waters of Oblivion (chapter excerpt)

     Jaagudar had something special in mind for Padmarana on his next visit to the tower at Landupali. It seemed that the young prince had never experienced the time of Holi was it was intended... with a mug of bhang and its concomitant pleasures. Unlike his cohorts who grew up in the villages, he had never tasted the holiday drink, for the purdah of women who clustered round his mother were ever watchful of “little boys getting into trouble.” Surely now, the prince was of an age when a little departure from the normal way of looking at things might help to loosen his spirits a little... For all that his parents had been doing in their attempt to undermine his love affair, and all the Brahmins had been up to to inflame the minds of his parents, and the whole big little world of Jharsuguda Gadh crowding in on his sense of personality...

     Padmarana rode up one fine morning on his horse, and stabled it in its usual spot. Jaadugar was sitting at his little desk in the bottom floor, with a wry smile on his face. He had already made the bhang, which now sat in a huge crock on the counter in his kitchen and he had had a few nips of it himself. But now, he offered his full mug to Padmarana.

     “Drink, my boy, for life is short, and we are mortal!”

     “What is...?”

     “This is the nectar of the Gods, young Master. Bhang, a concoction of milk and the ganga plant. It is Shiva’s blood, and his whelping-milk. It will make you see with your third eye open!”

     “Why do I...?”

     “Because, my boy, it is time you experienced a load off your mind. When I think of all the ways those people at Jharsuguda Gadh have misled you, and held you to promises you cannot keep, and expected you to live in their stilted and stuffy conditions for caste and status, I think of you as yet an innocent lamb in the hands of wolves! And here, I am offering you for today, a way to escape them!

Padmarana drank the glass, sipping it carefully. The sour taste of the milk, the sweetness of the rose petals, the indescribably spicy taste of the crushed ganga leaves... as well as the various spices and rose petals which Jaagudar has flavored it with... it was certainly a very, very tasty drink! When he had gulped the entire mug, he asked for more.

     “More? I suggest, young Prince, that you wait a while before you ask that of me. This is a powerful intoxicant! Two glasses may send you into a little head spin... I should hope you might keep your wits about you, at least!”

     “Today is Holi. I am supposed to be at the castle, and take part in their festival...”

     “Bah! Festivals! What are they but rituals for the peasants, and time for the Brahmins to reassert their stultifying stupors of stubborn stupidity! Nay, my Prince, the peasants, rest assured, are high on the bhang themselves! You only miss the crowds. And the colored dust. You can live without that. I am saying, for today, if you but sit here with me in the tower, and we recreate ourselves at some pleasure or another.... Why, it is a fine day for us to fish from the top of the tower! Would you enjoy that?”

     “Perhaps. I don’t know what I am to expect...”
     “Well, you may feel a little dizzy, but then, I will do the fishing, and you can sit in my chamber. Is that alright with you?”
     “I should hope so. I was planning to see Aruna near the time of nightfall...”

     “And so you shall, and so you shall. This will be but a mild few hours of excursion away from all your earthly duties, even, the duties you have to your love. Let me take your cloak... Here, set it here by the lintel.”

     Padmarana handed Jaagudar his coat, and as he sat warming himself near Jaagudar’s immense baking oven, he looked out the window toward the river. The horse was contentedly munching on the green shoots that grew from the river bank. Jackdaws and magpies and jays screamed laughably at each other in the morning light. Padmarana even, for a second, imagined he could understand them, and surprised Jaagudar with a crowing noise he directed toward the sounds up in the trees.

     “My prince! You can’t have come under the bhang so quickly!”

     But it seemed to Padmarana, of course, that perhaps he had.

     “Expect things to seem a little different after today, but especially for the next few hours. The bhang is like a curtain lifted from your eyes. It is one man’s intoxicant, as it is to another his toddy. You will understand why we only drink bhang for the holiday of Holi... There are few other ways to dispel the permanent cast of dreariness that the priests would like to see imposed n all of us! So be merry, be light of heart, Padmarana. Come, let us go to my chamber!”

     They climbed the stairs, up past the room in which Padmarana had studied the stars and the plants under Jaagudar’s command, up to the top level, and Padmarana took a seat on the wizard’s bed, as the wizard went to a wardrobe and collected out a fishing pole and a long, long skein of line. He fussed over the ends of it for a bit, and drew some bait from his wizard’s cape, and put it to his hook. Then, he waddled over to his little perch, the one where he often sat daily and dumped his stools into the water that ran beneath... and threw the line with hook and bait off into the rippling river below.

     “Ah, Padmarana! This is one deep pleasure I have, to just sit here and look at the river and the forest and the mountains, and not to have to turn back and look toward Jharsuguda Gadh and all the fuss it contains! For when I fish, I put myself into the mind of every fisherman that lived ever. I am only connecting myself to the great chain, and I only take what I need to eat, and to feed my friends such as you, And the great chain and the great river flow on, on ever onward! With or without us. You see, Padmarana, we are all a little bit like these fish, We swim in our bliss, unaware that there are little lines with hooks that dangle with bait to distract us from our journey on life’s river. One temptation and SNAP! you have been captured, and you are food for... whoever it is in society that has set their line on you. In your case, being at the top of the chain of Sakadwipa, there are all that many more snares being set for you. But I am leaving you this as an escape...”

     They sat silently, Every so often Jaagudar would pull on his line, and see there was no fish (yet), but then suddenly he had one. He had one! He drew in the line and on it was a six inch perch. He put the fish into a basket he kept near the passage to the little bench and laughed.
     “First one. But one is never enough, is it lad?”

     He baited his hook again. Suddenly, Padmarana felt it. The bhang had crept up on him so slowly, so unnoticeably, he hardly even saw... but now he started laughing uncontrollably, Sitting on the wizard’s bed, he slumped over, convulsed with giggles. Jaagudar looked at him, and laughed as well.

     “Ah, you see? My friend, this is what I knew you needed.”
     Padmarana was helpless now, he had fallen under the spell of the bhang.

     “Everybody at the castle is... like a duck!” he blurted, suddenly, inexplicably.

     Jaagudar looked at him with a wry grin.

     “And how so is that, young man?”

     “They are like ducks in a pond. There is a big gander. There is a cutting drake. There is my mother, all sudden and sodden in her ways... following behind... are all the others... Oh! They are a family of ducks!”

     Jaagudar laughed. “This is what I mean, Padmarana. The bhang gives you insight you never expected to get. And I am sure there will be more."

     Padmarana continued his laughing. Imagining Lalachi and Moee as the fattest, orneriest geese he had ever seen, he could see them even now, honking and blatting orders to his father. His father, who was The King!

     But the fun of the bhang was only beginning.

     Jaagudar tossed down his line again. A skein of geese were flying in the direction of the castle, The green forest showed wisps of smoke where the villagers were making their simple fires for morning meals. The day was young. His young student was accomplishing this all very well, so far...

     With Aruna clutching his waist from behind, Padmarana rode into the castle up from the market road. The horse proudly strutted, and many heads turned in the courtyard. Who was this woman riding with the prince?

     He dismounted and gave her his hand to help her down off Chaiya Bataka (Shadow Wanderer). With her hand still in his, they walked together, side by side, toward the inner doors of the king’s chamber.

     Mohan and his courtiers were gathered for lunch. When Padmarana and Aruna came walking into the throne room, hand in hand, heads went up. A gasp was heard from several of the Brahmins who usually took lunch along with the king. These were Daridar, Motee, Lalachi, and Bevakoop. Not quite immediately, but just as soon as the king had laid eyes on the boy and the girl, a cry of outrage came from the four Brahmins.

     “Mohan, you must send back all this we are eating, now! The shadow of a sudra has fallen upon your food! We are debased!”

     Mohan looked at his son and his lover. An expression of scorn and loathing Padmarana had never before known came to rest in his father’s brow lines.

     “Padmarana, who is this woman? The Brahmins are calling her sudra! Why have you brought a sudra to the palace? And why have you brought her to me? Wait, don’t say it. I can see it written on your faces. You are in love...”

     Padmarana, lost for words, could only nod.

     “Well and fine, then, my son, he is in love. And now he proposes to show off his no-caste paramour to me, his father the king!”

     Servants scrambled to grab the king’s plates and those of the Brahmins, who were gathered around the throne in a semi-circle, sitting on their knees. Motee was loath to surrender his plate, but the servants would be back again soon, with more.

     “Father, your Majesty, yes, this is the woman I love. Her name is Aruna and she is from the village of Katar-Baga. She may be a sudra, but she is from a good family. She is also a musician. I have often spent mornings listening to her and her friends as they gather by the river to play...”

     “So that is where you go every morning! Humph! I should have figured as much. And next I imagine you will tell me that you have engaged to marry this girl, eh?”

     Padmarana found himself nearly choked, now. A tear had begun to form in his eye, but he batted it back, and pressed on. He knew that the willfulness of his father was something he could not quite match, nor was his father’s temper something he ought to tread upon incautiously.

     “That is for the future, father, Your Majesty, but, yes, we have engaged.”

     Another uproar began among the Brahmins sitting at the king’s feet. Mohan shushed them with a wave of his hand.

     “Padmarana,” he said, his face now barely able to contain a certain mocking haughtiness, “You know what this will mean. Such things are just not done.”

     Mutters from the Brahmins. "No, no,” “just not done,” “tut-tut-tut!”

     “I have no idea what this will mean, your Majesty. I thought...”

     “Well, you thought. So, you thought. and what were you thinking? The son of the king of Chhattisgarh, married to a common woman, and a no-caste, at that? Do you realize what this will mean for our family? What do you think your mother will say?”

     The wrath of Queen Sasita was something Padmarana had not, in all fairness, even considered when he invited Aruna to ride to the palace with him that morning.

     “Truly, father, I do not yet know...”

     “Well I can tell you for one, Padmarana, that she will not be happy about this. But I will leave it to you to discover just what this will mean for her.”

     The news had already traveled quickly back to the purdah, where Sasita and her own group of Brahmins, cronies, and courtiers were engaged in the same meal. When Padmarana and Aruna approached the Queen, mouths dropped open.

     “It is Padmarana. And a strange woman! The sudra they told you about, o Queen! We must send back the meal!” the Brahmins wailed.

     “Yes, I see it is Padmarana. And I see the girl beside him appears to be a no-account of poor birth. And the king’s men tell me she is to be betrothed to my son!”

     Tears were openly rolling down Sasita’s face.

     “Oh, the shame! This cannot be for the Prince I gave birth to! To mock all the nobility of his line, and to marry a common person!”

     Aruna and Padmarana turned to each other. They exchanged a look, of knowing sadness. Both of them, holding back tears, gathered themselves and prostrated themselves at Sasita’s throne.

     “Your Majesty, my mother, I apologize sincerely for the regret you will face. But I have made my own mind up about this. Jaagudar says...”

     “Jaagudar! Jaagudar says! What is this, the Prince’s guru gives advice on marriage that, lest none of this house and court be consulted it should be precedent over our own family’s honor and tradition? Did you not ever realize that I had plans for you, Padmarana? I had planned for you to marry Anjali, the daughter of the wealthiest zamindar in the kingdom, and he was oh so very willing! She has a dowry that will bring you great wealth and riches! And you would wish to throw all of that away, and run off with a poor wretch...”

     Now Sasita buried her head in her arms, and two of her ladies in waiting came to her side. Rejection and spite was in their eyes, as they stroked the queen’ hair, and fanned her in the heat of the day.

     Padmarana continued.

     “Jaagudar says that if a man is in love, he should give his righteous will unto it. That there is nothing more important for a man of the world than love. It is my righteous will, my mother."

     “There is nothing more important for a fool, either!” Sasita interrupted.

     “If it means to disrupt what you have made plans for I am sorry, but, this is my life, and this is my love. You would love her, too, if you knew her.”

       Aruna blushed at the prince’s words, but she kept her silence.

     “I will take my dinner in my own room this evening. And the servants will cook me a meal that I shall eat, together with Aruna here, in my chamber. And traditions be damned! I want only what I know is the best fruit of my heart, the love I have for my love.”

     Rising, and dismissing the women at her side, Sasita glowered down at Padmarana.

     “And so you shall live with the consequences! I shall speak to Mohan about this. You go, and eat your supper, and take the girl away from me!”
     She strode off from the throne, and disappeared back to a divan that was set off behind a pair of screen. They could hear the queen’s agonized crying behind them as they left the purdah, and headed toward the prince’s own chambers.

     No one accompanied them, they were alone. And they were alone when they sat on the edge of the bed Padmarana had been sleeping in since coming from the tower of Jaagudar two years before. His bedchamber had some stools, some books, a telescope with which he would often stare up at the stars and planets with, and it was open on the river’s side to the cooling breeze. In this unlivable hot weather, the breeze of the afternoon was one sure friend.
     Aruna took his hand.

     “Padmarana, my prince. I had no idea they would react this way.”

      "I should have foreseen it. But, Jaagudar is right. A man should follow his heart and live by what it speaks to him. Their stupid Brahmins and traditions! It makes me want to weep for pity, it does.

     “Then do not pity them.”

     “But we must, of course, live with the consequences, as she says. That I am sure will not be long for these walls.”

     He looked around him. The little room had been at least as much a friend to him as the room at Jaadugar’s tower, for the time he had lived with his parents again. But the room also now took on the look for Padmarana as- just another place. Just another place where time and daydreams had been spent, uselessly, listlessly, none of it mattered. Home was where she was, and would be where she was, and the castle had never quite felt like a home.

     It would feel even less like a home when the king and queen summoned them later, after they had taken the meal the servants had brought them, and feasted, for what could be the last time, on the idlis, kir, and curried fish with bananas. The servants had brought it, and then scurried off, as if the two lovers already had something of the appearance of lepers, and bringers of ill fortune to the castle.

Padmarana and Aruna both came before Mohan again. Now, the Brahmins had been joined by Lalachi and Daridar) behind the King’s throne. Sasita stood at the king’s right hand, looking imperious, casting baleful looks to Padmarana and the girl as she was well wont to.

     “We have been talking, Padmarana. If you shall persist in your foolishness...”

     “I shall.”

     “Then we are forced to take actions. From now forward, you will not be welcome at Jharsuguda Gadh. You will live in the forest and live like the no-caste you would wish to be. You will not be welcome to come here, to sup, to revel in your silly past times, and lounge about the palace in the lap of luxury. For I am making you the head of my Rangers. You would not think I should just cast you out and not give you something worthy of my son, as a livelihood? But you have offended us, your mother and I. Making these rash choices always have a way of bringing karma back upon us, do they not?”

     Padmarana frowned. Their talk about karma, again! What kind of karma were they setting for themselves? But alright.

     Mohan continued.

     “As the head captain, of all the captains, of the forest rangers, It shall be your duty to ride the boundaries, to hunt down poachers and squatters, to keep order in the forest. You have shown yourself skillful at the hunt, therefore, you are also charged with keeping the tigers and the boars from terrorizing any villagers in our forest kingdom. You are also to keep watch for enemies, those who might take advantage of our sparse defenses, and ride upon us, whether from the north, or from the east.

     “I am sorry if I cannot wish you and your love a happy future. But in taking on this role, at least you might still keep something of your honor, from the house of Dwipa, the lineage of your ancestors, the nobility of this kingdom. Do you understand me?

     “Where shall we live, your majesty?”
     “That, my friend, will be entirely up to you. You are a clever son. I am sure you’ll figure things out.”

     Mohan clapped his hands. It was a signal for the armed guards who stood behind the queen, the councilors, the Brahmins, and all the courtiers, to come forward, and march the lovers from the throne room.

     “I may still keep Chaiya Bhataka?” he asked one of the guards that led them back through the courtyard.

     “As you wish, my prince.”

     At least some of the bits of his old life were not going away all so fast. That they still called him prince... this was something of a victory, itself.

     The stone hut that Padmarana found deep in the Ushakothi, abandoned at least a century, stood in a clearing among a stand of pipal and jacaranda trees, just fifty yards from the river. Set back from sight of those traveling the river in boats, more or less it afforded access for water for drinking, cooking, and washing, and Padmarana could also fish it if he wanted, but this, he rarely did.

     Around the hut others had made gardens in the past—locally, villagers called it “Pitapali” because it was once the home of a shepherd by that name, although its last three hundred years had seen it occupied by traveling sadhus and bikkhus, and so never continuously occupied, the garden spaces had grown back over with wild vetches and turmeric. Padmarana was riding along, with Aruna at his back sidesaddle, riding south from the wizard’s tower, when they came upon it—its small, squat, humble profile distinctly standing out from the green of the lianas and overgrowing pipal figs.

     “This! Here!” he cried, and Aruna clung even closer to him as he did, as his horse took an unexpected jump at the surprise.

     “This place! We’ll make it out own home. Our own castle. No one can exile us from, we will make it the new center of our lives!”

     Aruna meekly sighed, knowing full well Padmarana had had a speck of the villager’s lot to contend with, would be getting a full, fat dose of it, soon. How long would it be before his reckless idealism caught up to the flat reality of this—a life wrested from the land and soil, food bought by the sweat of his brow, the yearly onslaught of the monsoon and the perils it always brought along with it...

     The west side of the hut also where its entrance was, faced out toward the river. On the opposite wall was but one window, rather, a hole set in the stones that acted as a window for there seemed no way of stopping up the winds. Until they came, when Aruna hung a thick rug that could be turned aside to let in breezes.

     On the north side, the direction they rode down from, about two miles back was the village of Dumurmunda. Another seven miles below would be Katar-Baga, Aruna’s village. So she was not really all so far away, but, all of it was a good fifteen miles from Jaharsaguda Gadh.

     Around the hut, the forest was home to dozens of animals. A herd of sambal deer came by nearly every mourning. there were langurs and spider monkeys in the trees, and the forest birds made each morning begin with chatter, laughter, and territorial cries.

     “This will be perfect and all we’ll need,” Padmarana had said. Now it would be up to him to make it so.

     They brought with them not a lot of necessary supplies- they had blankets, carried on their horse, they had a small basket carrying two cooking pots, spices, and a couple of knives. The tools he would need (hoe, plow, rake, shovels) for their garden, Padmarana would trade or barter for in Aruna’s village that first week. No questions were asked of the Prince, for the news would have quickly spread through all of Sakadwipa that King Mohan had banished his own son from Jharsuguda and all he was doing had the complete support of the villagers, who, while afraid to speak ill of the king, were even more loath to speak ill of Padmarana or say anything he might construe as insulting him.

Besides, those who knew them both already adored Aruna, who has long been held to be the most talented of the apsaras living in the village. And her friends would assure she was never truly lonely, for Eesha and Kiya and Sunila would come to the stone hut to visit, often.

     When Aruna and Padmarana came to the hut, they did not being a lot of clothing with them. Because Aruna’s village was not so far, she took only a couple of saris along to begin with, but returned several times so that in end, she had most of her own clothing with her.

     Padmarana though, growing up as a noble prince, had nearly five times that many clothes at the castle, and when he left, took only the clothes he was wearing and his “ranger’s dress.” official uniform. He returned to the castle but once, to gather a heavy cloak, a robe, and four different salwar kameez. These would be his only (and most humble) wardrobe through the years of his banishment.

     Aruna also brought from her parents’ home the vina she played, often when she was solitary and alone, but more often when her friends came to visit. The morning concerts they had by the river continued, only they had moved to the hut, but Padmarana enjoyed them no less than he had before.        The girls were happy in their continued friendship and the concerts progressed without the usual explanations or interruptions of the villagers, too busy in their livelihoods to bother with traveling the extra distance to hear them.

     Padmarana’s garden, begun during the monsoon, took shape as months passed. He built barricades to keep out the sambal deer, improved the already burly stands of turmeric and mint, harvested pipal figs and other fruits from the trees thereabout, when he was not called upon to patrol with his rangers.

His Rangers were hardy, swarthy men born to the Kshatriya caste themselves and given, (in their spare hours), to dice and odd games of risk and contest. Padmarana had no difficulty in keeping them indiscipline, however, for all of them recognized his authority,. The principal chief of the mahouts, Tonkeraja. had by now become his best friend outside of Jaagudar, beyond the castle, if only because he was seen more often, and frequently.

     Whenever Padmarana was away, Aruna would sit in the shade of the stone hut on a little stone bench he had made for her, and talked to the birds. She would begin by mimicking one of the birds which would no doubt begin to listen to her, and reply. She could imitate many of the local birds including the mynahs, the sparrows, the crows and the kites. In this manner she would cajole and tease the various different birds who lived in the forest canopy just across the way.

     Aruna had begun this little practice as a child, and so far, she had not mentioned a word of it to Padmarana. This was her little daily meditation, where she could join in with the chorus of the innocent creatures who merely sing their own presence to the world. It was a wonderful way for her to feel she was connected- to the earth, to the Mother Goddess, to Brahma and the great visions that anyone could see were after all, only figments in Brahma’s imagination.

     This then was her own world view, that the great Brahma was the overarching sustainer of everything, and that all people were, and all the trees animals people and stars… were just objects within Brahma’s unknowable mind. Therein, the souls of all humanity mingled in a great soup of knowledge and folly, every state of human endeavor could be turned whichever way Brahma pleased, and all of us were no more than motes of dust in the sun rays that broke from the forest floor across to where she sat…

     Of course, there was work to do, and she would get to that. But it always helped her when she could make the time to speak to the birds. At some times, she thought the birds began to recognize her and the times of day she would sit with them, but no, the birds didn’t keep conversation books or appointment slips, the birds were there just for the sake of their birdness.

     When she was small, she had chased the kites and crows from the grain fields, but now, the pleasant songs of the forest birds and the pleasant way they made her feel was what came to minds when birds did. What she could not know, was that the goddess had chosen birds as her preferred method of letting her know things- as an apsari, and still within the realm where beneficent spirits are ordained to come to earth and help with human progress, there were chores the goddess would presume her to undertake on that behalf.

     One of these was that she were to marry Padmarana, become the Queen of the Realm, and so, be in a position to help what the actual spirit guardians of the world wanted to see done. It would be for the people that she lived, but she, as Padmarana’s wife and lover, could sleep and dream of life in the charpoy of Queen Sasita. Padmarana, by this age, had had quite enough of it. He would not live out his princedom in jealous and impatient expectation. How could he, he could tell the disdain his father now held him in just by the scornful way he had sent him out to scratch up a living from the wilderness. And so, it were much better just to focus on the needs of the Rangers, of the regions under his protectorate, and the people within them. He could rule where his father would not bother!      And in this way, he could also make more friends.

    But friendship with a prince is always, for those who are born of a lower seat, a proposition which is a double edged sword. For gaining the favor of a prince might curry the disfavor of a jealous neighbor, and those who were once friends might become rivals. The idea that there could even be rivals for the throne of his father was not something he could consider, or at least, would not consider seriously at this pint in time. Who would dare question the motives and deeds of a great king like Mohan? Who indeed, except for the Brahmin caste who stood behind the throne whispering in his father’s ears. Were they truth or lies they whispered?

     For now, the friends Prince Padmarana had were his elephant mahout, Tonkeraj, Jaagudar the wizard and the wizard’s assistant Lalnivasi, his wife, of course, and maybe he could consider her parents, and most of their neighbors, also to be “friends,” although there was still that irrevocable caste differentiation that stood between Padmarana and the people of the streets.

     As for Aruna, whose new status among her friends had been elevated to second-next -place to-God (the King), among her friends her company was sought ever more eagerly, but it

was not for several months that Aruna came back to the village and invited them to visit. When they did, the girls would sit outside on the bench and on the grassy places in front of the hut, and play their instruments as they had before Padmarana had come riding along and changed all their lives.

     Aruna preferred to play her music in the afternoons now, and afternoon ragas like Bhimpalasi and Suud Sarang became the focus of what they would improvise upon, rather than those of the early and mid morning. These ragas were a little more active, carried more insistent rasas, and left each of them, at their conclusions, happy that they had completed those particular walks through the forests of raga. Aruna began to see the forest itself as a means of inspiring her playing, alive as it was with the myriad plants and animals that she knew to be there, but made so little seen of themselves.

     And as for those animals, there were some who were drawn by the music, to stand their distance and listen, charmed as they were by the magic weaved by the band of young goddesses.

The Prince in Local Exile

     Padmarana and Aruna slept in the stone hut for a week, during the late summer. The morning the monsoon began he awoke in a bed of sweat, although Aruna was sleeping right beside him. He dreamed he was swimming- no, drowning- in a sea of buttermilk. When he awoke, the rain had began to make a pool near the doorway of the hut. He sprung up and, ignoring the rain, grabbed a hoe and began to cut channels to divert the rainwater from their entrance. He could see, however, that this was a job which might take him the better part of the day, and he wished he had thought of it sooner, but the rains were here, and he would just have to cope somehow.

     While he dreamed of a buttermilk sea, Aruna beside him dreamed she watched a flock of birds “a hundred miles long” passing over their hut on their way south.

     Aruna watched him from the doorway called to him when she had made for them chapattis and dal­—the repast was nourishing, and he forgot for a while when he began again how uncomfortable he really was, with the rain falling on his back. He had never had ventured out into it while in the castle- although he spent many at the tower with Jaagudar doing garden work in the rain, and he had not a minded it, his dream felt so uncomfortable, that at the end of his work, when he had come in from the rain with muddy hands and feet, he collapsed onto their bed, and Aruna had to wash his extremities for him, because he fell straightaway to sleeping again, and woke up late, when the moon was out, and the clouds had passed, for now.

     Aruna was awake, then, as well, and had spent the time while Padmarana slept arranging her trousseau so that she had her wet weather things all laid out and easy to get to.

     “Aruna, we are going to have to do a few hard things...”

     “Yes, I know...”

     “We need to get some large jars to catch the rainwater, for one thing, And I need some more tools to work on making a garden... and I need seeds for plants, and we have to get them in as soon as we can. When the rains stop there will be no way of getting more water except if we walk all the way to the river, and I know, you do not wish to do that every day. Bad enough you must take our clothes to wash each week! But can you perhaps ask your father if he can spare us some seeds?”

     “Yes, love, I can ask it of him. I do not know how he will respond. Since last year when the zamindars came and took his cotton crop at less the price he thought hey would pay him, he is probably dear with the seeds we have there. But I shall ask for you.”

      When she visited her father, though, she found him irritable and more than a little upset.

“This is something which you two should have thought about sooner! I have seeds, yes, and I will part with some, mostly for the things you will need to eat, of course, but as for jars, your mother and I are hard put out for it. Perhaps you can go to Miti Adami, the potter, and ask of him?

     “I know Padmarana has some money, and he still has access to the riches of the castle, even as they will not allow him to return to live. We will find a way to pay Miti Adami.”

     ‘Everyone in the village is still shocked, you know, Aruna, that the king decided not to let you two live in the (castle with them). They will probably help you, but of course, if he greases their hands, of course, I am sure they will help that much better.”

     Emanadar, her father, went to his larder shelves and began to grab handfuls of seeds from the jugs he poured them from, which lay on shelves that reached to the roof, He made stops in six different jugs, and when he was done with each one, he poured the handfuls into scarves that he then knotted and tied. When he was all finished, he wrapped them in another, larger piece of cloth, and handed them to her.

     “This should see you both through until our next harvest at the end of the year. Beans, rice, greens, and some melons. I wish, daughter, that both of you can find some way back into the good grace of the king. I know it will probably not happen, given the king has such a stubborn way about him, but if you can...”

     He did not finish. Aruna knew his heart. She took the bag on her shoulder, kissed her father and set off for the home of Miti Adami, the potter.

     When she got there she found Adami taking a number of items out of his kiln, and lining them all up against the back wall. “There! I have just finished the order for Zamindar Zaroori Kaan. What can I do for you, my Princess?”

     “Please don’t call me that, no, not yet, Adami! I am a princess in name only, I am an outcast. And I am here to ask you a favor of my husband.”

     ”Yes, and?”

     “We are living in a small hut in the Ushakothi forest. We have no way to gather rainwater now. Can you make us, or do you have on hand, some jars which will help us through these rainy weeks to come? My husband can pay...”

     “Your husband, I am sure, can pay. But it is not a good thing which his father did to both of you! It is one thing to speak of “customs” and “the way things are always done,” it is another to turn a hard heart to one’s own flesh and blood! Bah! I want no money from the Prince! You may take what you need, and if it is more than you can carry today, I will have Gopal my runner boy bring more out to you, tomorrow!”

     Aruna bowed, for this was a rather handsome sacrifice for the poor potter to make for the behalf of a prince, even a banished one. He would be losing many rupees indeed! But she thanked him. She stuck the cloth full of seeds into one of the biggest jugs she could manage, and took up another one in her other hand. So burdened, she walked from the village back over the paths and the hills and along the river until she reached Pitapali, and the hut.

     Padmarana had spent his day preparing beds for whatever plants she might be returning with. When he saw the rice, he frowned.

     “Rice! What a lot of work that will be!”’

     ”But it will be easier because of the rains, dear!”
     “Yes, but my feet will always be wet!”

     “You would rather we had empty bellies?”

     “No, of course! But now I must create a place for rice as well. Oh well, so be it...”

      He was up early the next morning, building a paddy for the rice. Some of the channels he mad e the day before could be turned in so that they flooded it, but he was lucky that the bulk of the rains- when it would rain night and day- were yet perhaps a week away. It meant he could build the paddy as well as get the seeds in.

     They soaked the seeds in a large bowl and left them another day so that they’d sprout, and once they had, Padmarana went out into the paddy, which was about three inches of mud over his feel, and began the laborious task of inserting the seeds, some three to five at a time, into the mud beneath his feet. This took him the better part of the day, but he was heartened when Aruna came to him as he labored and bought him steaming hot tea, and chapatis. He took a break from the work and sat under one of the banana trees that rose from the edge of the hut. Here, they would need more than just their dreams to get by. They would need all the things they had learned and more, and there were always more things to learn. So many things that would never have occurred to a prince to need to know! But he was only a prince in name, now. He might as well be just another peasant.

     Padmarana noticed something as he sat looking toward the river. Along the path that ran by the river’s edge, he saw men walking. They were dressed in long robes of orange, and grey. For every five steps they took, they threw their heads to the ground, and spoke inaudible prayers, placing their forearms before their heads, then they rose, and took five more steps, while they repeated this over and over, as they made their way down the riverbank trail.

     Monks! They must be! The sight of the pilgrims making their way slowly and with such ritual left an impression on Padmarana- this would have been his life, perhaps, had he not fallen in love and decided to make Aruna his wife!

     The monks continued, slowly, and uninterrupted, and he watched them until they were no longer visible for all the forest brush, and they were gone.

     Aruna boiled water for tea in a kettle on the fire hearth. She had gathered a number of twigs and branches of various bushes and plants near the hut, and Padmarana sat looking out the window across the grass way to the river. The air was languid, simmering, hot with the doldrums of summer, and hung thick with promise of weeks of more of the same. Padmarana broke a biscuit in two, ate half, and placed the other on a plate on a table beside his chair at the window. Now the young river birds were just beginning to flock up, the first approaches of fall were hinted at. The situation between Padmarana and Mohan remained volatile and unpredictable, the son had begun to resent his father for the judgment that placed him and Aruna beyond the protection of the palace grounds, but now, Padmarana was more of a man of the people than he could ever become had he remained with the cloistered patrimony of the court. So far as he knew, his father was unrelenting once he made up his mind, and Padmarana decided to resign himself to the fact that, the future would be completely unpredictable. He was still eh heir to Mohan’s throne, this would not change, and so there was still the authority dispatched to him by Mohan among the jungle peasants, but even so, Padmarana’s status within the court was fully banished.

     And so the sooner he accepted it all, and just stayed close to his new home and wife, and took to protecting the population and the wildlife of the forest, he would have no other bad comportment to deal with at his father’s hands. The peasants acknowledged him as Prince, and as someone living amongst them, grew to favor him over the King himself, which was in the future to prove a lucky thing indeed.

     At the hut that night, Aruna made him a fabulous meal, which he took some part in preparing. Together they made rice balls, curried spinach, broiled greens and chapatis. They washed it all down with juice from several mangoes they had gathered that afternoon.\

     The night was hot and the wind was still. Only the birds echoing calls across the river, and crickets in the tall grass that wended its way to it, could be heard above the gurgle of the water.

     Aruna and Padmarana lay in the bed together, looking out the one window above them at the starry sky.

     “Did you know, Aruna, that in between the stars is a fantastic network of minds?”

     “No, I did not, my sweet. There is much about the wide world I have no such sense of.”

     “This, Aruna, is I believe the basis of us all. Between the stars are great networks of beaming energetic love. It sustains the fire of the stars, it sustains the fire in the lives of men. IT is the warmth and comfort of the great Mother that loves us all. That is what I see when I look up at the great sky.”

The Moon, which was in the sign of the Scorpion, was no mean candle as it shone down upon their hut and bounced its light in multicolored spatters across the foaming, rushing river. The branches of one of their garden vines that had wended themselves up the side of the hut was the only interruption of the clear frame of the sky beyond the window. Light grey clouds had begun to form up with a slight breeze that had come with sunset, and were now marching to the west rosy ribbed and pink above the Mahadani River.

     Padmarana gave thanks for his good fortune, marrying for love, made to feel he was shamed in his humble poverty, to the contrary, he felt glad that he was able to provide for his wife and himself and at the same time, free, with privacy, from the backbiting and sniping and name-calling that went on the with Brahmins, the courtiers, the purdah, and his Mother and Father the King and Queen, the daily gossip of the court, the mundane and often stupid concerns of those too ignorant to cherish the still space of their conscience.

     No, here he had peace, such peace as he could never have if he were to be thrust into his father’s throne, unprepared, to whatever extent that Jaagudar’s eccentric tutoring had not touched matters he would turn into deep nighttime worries. The worries of kings and men who have something to lose.

As they began to make love, Aruna clung to him and he felt a shiver through his entire spine as she led him through several levels of chakravarti. The energies in their spines merged throughout their bodies, and their passions stoked the kundalini serpent’s climb up through to top of their skulls. And these skulls too, he thought, will one day all be food for Kali’s ashes. Like the ones strung round her neck, merciless and thoughtless now, themselves just chains of beads on a string that adorned her nipple.

     The pink ribbed clouds of sunset had passed beyond the moon, but now overhead through the night came darker thick ones, and thunder. The monsoon would not arrive for another week, but the weather had begun to turn. When Padmarana finally rolled over to sleep, after considering the various concerns that went through his mind… the garden, was it properly tended? The grass for the cow, was it still greening? The different sacks of provisions, were they all stored carefully and neatly in the tiny stone hut’s pantry? Finally, all resolved that whatever he might be missing now, he was doing his best as a husband, he shut his eyes to the world.

     Padmarana finished his garden in the coming three weeks, all the while complaining about the mud caked round his ankles and the almost incessant rains, working while they were light and returning to Aruna’s side, in the warm hut, when they were torrid. Soon, his rice plants were half a foot tall, and sticking up green and flat against the backdrop of mud puddle and paddy. The other plants had sprouted as well, and bean vines began crawling up the several poles he and Aruna had staked around the sunny side of the hut. Everything else they had put in was beginning to show leaf as well, and it would only be for these ugly old rains to stop, for them to feel they had actually made something for themselves, here, out of nothing.

     For nothing was all that King Mohan felt the need to do, in favor of his son. Along with his work on the garden, Padmarana was still expected to groom his troops, inspect the forests and the borders, attack and seize any poachers he came across, and keep up good spirits in the numerous villages that rested between the river, the greater jungle, and the river at the northern border.

     Padmarana would spend those hours with the rain falling outside to clean his saddle and his sword, and as he was still prince, the small feathered crown he would disdain wearing, lest he were traveling to the villages. It was on those occasions when looking princely was something diplomatically needed, and while many of the villagers knew of his new condition, living outside Jharsuguda Gadh, just as many likely did not, and he needed all the powers of impression and persuasion he could muster.

     There were, of course, problems in the villages, problems that were rarely, if ever, brought before the king, mostly handled by the local village headmen, all elected by their peers, and serving, more or less, until they died off. In the village of Beura Padmarana came across a family who had had all their banana trees smashed and fruit stolen by marauding monkeys, and while the monkeys were somewhat looked on as “holy incarnations of Hanuman” and given wide berth from most human brickbats, Padmarana decided he would need to take action, lest these poor peasants (who otherwise had little in the way to support themselves) should starve over the coming months.

     Padmarana rounded up a number of his forest rangers, and set about making traps and snares for the monkeys, baiting each one with papayas and bananas. Within days, they had arrested over seventeen monkeys, and Padmarana ordered them cages, and ferried to the other side of the river, far from the village, out of the forests. It would not be meet enough to allow them to be hunted by their natural enemies, the panthers and leopards, for these monkeys had already succumbed to the attractions of human life, and would only cause more commotion.

     “Let them cause commotion across the river, where the people are not under my powers of command,” he told the troops.

     The villainous monkeys were taken in several large cages, screaming and screeching their defiance at relocation, and the rangers took them to the river near Jharsuguda Gadh, where they found two or three ferrymen to take them over to the other shore.

     “They will not dare to swim back across, (captain of the rangers) said, “they will find a new life, and make it some way.”

     When Padamrana visited Jaagudar the next time, he told Jaagudar what he had done.

     “This was something of wisdom on your part, my prince. For you did not think to just slaughter the monkeys. Such a thing would well be in the grasp and mettle of your father to do. But you removed the irritation from the people, and you spared their lives. Excellent thinking, young man!”

Padmarana blushed. He could only hope his future decisions could be as full of benevolence.

     Aruna’s sleep in the stone hut on those nights she was alone, and Padmarana out amongst the forest and villages, was never broken when the rains came, or even thunderclouds stole over the moon and broke their trumpets against the stillest hours of the night. And as the rain fell, often if Aruna were laying awake staring at the ceiling, she would sense the presence of the highest goddess of all the apsaris in the realm, Saraswati herself.

     “Fear not Aruna, for I am giving you and your friends the ability to make many changes, many changes in your land. The prince will prosper, and there will be strange energies, but rest assured that both your time here in this shepherd’s hut, and his time away from the palace of his father, will not be long in years or in your time. And I am giving you the talas and the ragas you will need, and you can use to bring harmony amongst the people of the citadel, and farther, along the river and through the deep forest lands. All will come to recognize the power of your realm and the rightness and compassion of its rulers. But that day...”

     Aruna lie there, startled. What day? When? What was this? The goddess was telling her not to worry. But worry about what, and for how long? All these things both mystified and annoyed her.           While Aruna was belittled, and turned away from the court for her “non-caste” family and parentage, in actuality, amongst the apsaris, Aruna was the chief of all the music-spirits which dwelled in Sakwadwipa. Even more than her friends, who had also reincarnated to the villages of the Ushakothi, Aruna alone had the power to communicate with certain animals, particularly the birds, and with the goddesses themselves. Many lifetimes she had conquered the base desires of fame and fortune What fortune now came her way- betrothed to the future king of Sakwadwipa! -was that which she had earned. Although her mind was not far from one of your typical village maiden, she also was quiet, pious, and attended to her elderly parents most dutifully. When she and Padmarana had been banished to the forest of Ushakothi, she took it lightly, for she knew that every situation we hold in life is but temporary. The temporary may last days, or years, but nothing is ever what we felt it might have been yesterday, and the wise move along with slow surety toward their goals, regardless of the obstacles made out of cloth lying back in the past.

     For Aruna, the ability to speak to the goddesses was not something she had actually ever sough. More, if she were praying ,the goddesses themselves might take it upon themselves to intercede in her prayers, and correct her in the manner or ends which she sought so ardently. The prayers she prayed were for: good health for her and her husband, and most of all, because of his position, and his future one- his safety. And for the rains, and for a good harvest, and that the forest animals would not make mincemeat of their garden, and for the health of her old doting parents, bless their hearts. And then she would pray for her friends, and the parents of her friends, and then, singly for each person she knew well in the village, for they were all bearers of a significant and localized karma, and whether or not any of them knew it, they would all play a role in the new Sakwadwipa, which would be founded on the kingship of her husband, but in their future life.

     Expectations for their future life were rare in her mind, although they were never entirely absent. You could not say Aruna was without any ambitions at all, but that these ambitions were yoked to the idea that she was put here by the goddesses to both serve their common muse, and change the dharma of Jharsaguda and the Ushakothi woods people, and that there might ever be peace within this kingdom, so long as she had life to live, breath the breathe, and stars in the darkened sky to walk beneath.

     For now, the goddess had vanished into the mists of the river fog, and as the rain ceased and the little frogs made their creeping, creaking chirps to welcome the first signs of dawn, Aruna realized there was little she could do that would arrest her fate, whatever that was to be.

     And so she sighed, resigned. Something and someday, the goddess says. Well let us see!