It was definitely worth the wait.
26,000 years... was that how long it took? Then... ZAP! Nightmare over. The Dream Come True. Dripping wet.
Got to get rid of the old skepticism. Survival mechanism. No need for that anymore. Well, maybe a hint of irony now and again won't hurt. Call me a sentimental old fool. I still have a calendar from the Old Reality. It's in a rusty filing cabinet along with ancient letters, photographs, yellowed newspaper articles from the 1980s; personal memorabilia from the days when I was still a "person."
There it is: the last United World College Global Concerns Calendar, marked 2030. Whew, what a year THAT was...
Noia, ink'ala ne hav'la vo ki'a. Vek'ila ya nei'a, a'vo?
Aion gazed at his young wife and smiled.
She looked up from the VR monitor and winked at him. Fascinating stuff, the early history of the Pleiades. I was just starting on Merope.
Aion had been wedded to Noia long enough to receive her thought signals with almost full resolution. She'd never really been into speech all that much though when she felt particularly cheerful she was known to babble like a mountain brook.
Watch out! You've inspired another poem, Aion flashed back at his mate. He kissed her smooth brown shoulder and rested his hand on her belly. "I'm hungry, how about you?" he asked, vocally.
Noia cocked her head and then nodded enthusiastically, hitting the pause control on her Virtual Reality console. They strolled out into the palace gardens, hand in hand, clucking to the cockatoos who were, as usual, clowning around with Saint Peter the pangolin.
"Eh Pedro, getting more than a little cocky, aren't you?" Aion quipped, bending to tickle the scaly anteater under his furry snout. The gentle creature licked Aion's hand with lazy flicks of its sticky tongue and gazed affectionately at the humans. Noia giggled and flung off her pareo, enjoying the perfect sunshine on this truest of blue-sky days.
"And to think you used to keep your sarong on in the shower," Aion laughed and followed suit - only he wasn't wearing a pareo but his favorite Chinese silk loon pants.
Aion and Noia had met and married back in the mid-Nineties, just before the Old Reality phased itself out. She had been a mere 22 Earth years and he already a well-preserved 44. Age was a major concern in the Age of Death, Disease, and Decay.
Incredible, really, to have witnessed and participated in the Transition. Never before in the entire history of Creation had such a phenomenon been experienced. Linear Time quantum-jumping the Spiral of Galactic Synchronization and bursting forth into Spherical Time. Science fantasy, sword and sorcery, fairy tale and News of the World all rolled into one. Real estate, insurance, politics, banks, and bureaucracy all a thing of the so-called Past... ha, remember when there were lawyers all over this planet? There were even humans who played the role of Judges. They sometimes sentenced other humans to death. Unbelievable... but it wasn't all that long ago, to use an old-fashioned and now totally meaningless phrase.
"Let's see... what shall we eat?" Aion said, more to himself than to Noia, who was already keying in her order at the dining pavilion. He scanned the day's menu on the smoky quartz screen built into the oval table of polished stone. Broccoli with cheese sauce? Chee cheong fun with cordyceps? Ghee rice with pumpkin curry? Macaroni soup and asparagus spears? Wild honey on buttered toast? How about some good old yong tow foo?
Noia was grinning impishly when Aion glanced up at her. On the grail table sat two tempting plates of Hainanese chicken rice, two steaming bowls of leek soup, and a side serving of juicy bean sprouts. Feeling a touch nostalgic for the vanished ways, after all that history! "What's your drink? Preserved kumquat and honey?"
Aion had to smile. "Why not?" Back in the old 3-dimensional reality, humans ate a fantastic amount of chicken. Billions of birds were slaughtered each day to feed the "dominant species." Incubator-hatched from eggs and raised in "scientifically designed” batteries, the poor fowls never once got to peck at real dirt in a farmyard. The same foul treatment was meted out to pigs, goats, cattle, fish, sheep, and even plant species.
And if you consider that inhuman, you won't believe some of the ways humans treated other humans - especially those deemed inferior or a potential threat to their excessive lifestyles.
As they tucked into the totally delicious, molecularly reconstituted meal, Aion slipped briefly into a meditative retroscan of the amazing breakthrough in +2026 O.R. (Old Reality) when a critical mass of humans, determined to stop exploiting other lifeforms, began expressing their collective will. This resulted in a switch to the trinary code (IAO) which made it possible to obtain holographically perfect digital samples of all bio-matter on the planet and store it permanently in the crystalline hard memory of the Earth - dubbed the Diamond Sutra - and retrieve the information at will for high-speed organic reconstitution and 3D printing.
For instance, we were able to extract a complete hologram sample of the healthiest, happiest hen that ever ranged freely on a well-kept farm - and use the basic data to generate an infinite supply of chicken to every finger-lickin' chicken-lover in the universe - without ever having to catch a live specimen and kill it and boil the feathers off and so on. The same technique was applied to pigs, goats, cattle, fish, sheep, and every edible plant species on the planet.
This was how we ushered in the Age of Abundance, which instantly rendered all previous notions of strategic survival behavior irrelevant and obsolete. The Quest for the Grail was finally over: the sacred vessel that sustained all life, the proverbial cornucopia, the fountain of eternal renewal had been discovered - and her name was Gaia-Sophia, also known as planet Earth.
People still planted vegetables and flowers and kept poultry and other animals around their yards; and sheep and cattle continued to graze on green pastures. And fish continued to swim in streams and lakes and oceans. Everything carried on more or less as before. But now no lifeform existed merely to play a part in the endless food chain. Now they existed for the sheer pleasure of it.
And when that wore thin, each could seek out a Transmutation Vortex where its vital force could release itself into new adventures, while the organic structures were destructured and recycled into the energy-matter continuum ad infinitum.
It wasn't till +2033 that humans embarked on the process of translating themselves into pure trinary encodings and immersing themselves wholly in the Diamond Sutra, thus freeing themselves of their dense hydrocarbon-protein spacesuits - which could be swiftly reconstituted and worn anytime they felt like an excursion into the lower frequency zones.
Just for "old time's sake," Aion lit a reconstituted cigarette and leaned back contentedly. Noia cleared the grail table with a few deft movements of her right index finger on the recessed keyboard. DELETE LUNCH? OK. Done. Then she burst into an expression of radiant joy. "Oy, tengok siapa datang!" she broke out in her ancient mother tongue. Look who's here!
"Chuen!" Aion leapt to his feet and hugged his 29-year-old son, who had reconstituted his physical form in the garden. Noia lost no time joining the embrace: One again! Divine bliss rippled through the dimensions, causing some single-celled organisms somewhere in a different universe to divide and reproduce prolifically.
Chuen had just returned from his latest mission in some remote Hypoallergenic Zone of the galaxy where diehard divisionists with chronic dystopia were insistent on living by the deadly laws of Duality. Even the Corpus Christi had to endure the occasional breakout of moral scabies.
At 29 Chuen was the youngest Star Commander of the ICYF (Intergalactic Confederation Youth Fleet). He grinned, impish just like his mother, and wrinkled his nose at his father's tobacco smoke. "Long time since I indulged," he said in English (one of 17 languages at his command) and accepted a nicotine stick from his never-aging Old Man. Chuen took a long drag and exhaled like some retro French movie star. "Hey, how about a nice cup of tea to go with this?"
"Susu mau?" Aion looked up from the grail keyboard. Milky tea for everyone? Noia and Chuen nodded, and plonked themselves into a giant hammock under the mango trees.
Knew I'd find you both frolicking in your favorite paradise program. Chuen generally communicated telepathically with his mother. Noia kissed her son on his nose. You know we're comfortable here, but it would be great to have you with us more often.
Aion came over with three mugs of tea and placed two on the mossy turf below the hammock. "Room for one more?"
Noia gave Chuen a wet kiss and wriggled out of the hammock. "You can take my place, darling. I promised to meet Sembo, Hani, Maye, Halus and Titit at the waterfall. Women's splashabout, but you two are most welcome. I'm sure the girls would be surprised and delighted to see Chuen."
"Give me a few moments with Daddy," Chuen said. "I have information for him to download. Metaphysical stuff, Mum. Hey, don't tell the girls I'm here. I want to play a little trick on them."
You were well named, Chuen the monkey! Noia tweaked both their noses affectionately and danced off towards the river, singing.
Aion snuggled into the hammock beside Chuen, sipped his tea, and sighed. "Okay, I'm ready." Chuen put down his mug of tea and placed his right hand on Aion's upturned left palm. He waited till his father's breathing rhythm was in perfect synchronization with his own, and then began downloading.
Soon Aion could feel a tingle in his forebrain as Chuen locked frequencies with him. A huge videoscreen lit up in Aion's mind's eye. Chuen was in his Sananda aspect, the one he favored when transmitting factual information. It was a sort of pharaonic face: gentle, wise, and bearded like the archaic Jesus icons. Chuen chose his Sananda image because he knew Aion's deep memory would be more receptive to inputs from an archetypally recognizable source.
The dreamtime documentary was in 5th dimensional hypertext and cybernetically compressed. Only certain fragments of it can be stepped down into linear language.
All that pain and suffering and seemingly endless horror was necessary, though not inevitable. The experiment could have taken a very different turn. Which it did, in another time track, now flowing concurrently with the present.
What people called "the stony path" - the pilgrimage through the Valley of Death - provided valuable tactile experience which has enriched all realities everywhere. Especially now that it is accessible in mesonic code and no longer virulent to nascent intelligence.
In the separation of inner from outer lies the origins of the self-exploratory game of Us vs Them. Each camp locked in perpetual conflict with its illusory opposite, its Nemesis, each struggling for dominance over the other, the outcome always doomed from the outset - since each would transform into the other at the height of its hostility or fear.
However, the bi-polar combustion was the engine for the Earth's emotional evolution. As she awoke to her true nature, she was able to transmute the fission energy into fusion force, and project her inner crystalline form outward into the heliocosm.
Thus did the Earth attain radiant illumination and initiation into the stellar community via the higher intelligence network within her mineral core and upon the semi-elastic surface of her Dream Body. As she emerged from the Density Beam that marked "recorded history" (i.e., the period from -3113 to +2023 O.R.) the Cosmic Context was reinstated in her consciousness.
Every sentient being on the planet that was receptive to the surge of expanded frequencies was able to ride the crest of that electromagnetic tidal wave into the subtle dimensions beyond the third. The rigid structures upholding economic and political systems rapidly buckled as the electromagnetic grid realigned itself with the Galactic Core and sociocultural control mechanisms immediately broke down. Artificial barriers evaporated like mirages and ancient taboos turned on their heels and died of shock.
You have a question: what became of the tinpot despots, the trigger-happy generalissimos, the secret policemen, and the brigand chiefs? Yes... just a moment. Well, the ones working consciously as anchor points were easily debriefed and transferred to the harmonic heavens on Level Eleven. The ones operating in total unconsciousness are still shadow-boxing in their sleep, safe in their own Quarantine Area, along with others unwilling to let go of their predator programming.
What was the casualty rate? As far as we know, only one-seventh of the human population chose to remain in the Old Reality. For them nothing has happened. The illusion of linear time and history continues to bind them in oscillating melodrama for another 26,000-year Evolutionary Cycle. Or at least till they realize what the Game Plan is all about and release their fearful deathgrip on their inner beings.
Incredible revelations had been accumulating since the final years of the 19th century and by +2019 there was no longer any excuse for any human being anywhere on Earth to plead ignorance. News of clandestine genetic experiments conducted on human and animal specimens by deluded aliens and sanctioned by a secret government had broken. The fantastic origins of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid Complex at Giza had been disclosed and discussed with excitement around the planet. The mysterious designs on the Nazca plains, the magical calibrations on Mayan monuments, the universal resonance of aboriginal myths and legends had been pointed out and publicly disseminated.
T'he last of the media moguls had converted to the truth - and had committed themselves wholeheartedly to alerting the entire human population to the gigantic electromagnetic tidal wave rippling out from the Alpha and Omega points of the Galactic Core, as our Sun began to merge with its etheric double to form a Greater Central Sun.
Rainbow warrior tribes which had been gathering for two generations were already anchored in their various bioregions, awaiting the signal to take over responsibility as members of the Earth Council for Solar-Planetary Affairs. Over many decades their concerted campaign for the Earth had successfully cushioned the impact of ecocidal destruction, keeping it to a survivable limit.
The Masters had coordinated one final mass illumination exercise in December +2024 when millions of incarnate stellar emissaries ascended amidst celestial displays of unimaginable beauty. Their missions accomplished, they were home free at last. You have only partial recall of that initiation because of your addiction to physical sensory data, but I am helping you to transmute gradually.
Remember when the Temples of Mammon were converted to Community Arts Centers wherein the aesthetically handicapped were able to rehabilitate their perceptions in a colossal celebration of the Creative Spirit? Well, all of this seemingly happened overnight, over a 23-hour period between one Frequency Zone and the next. There will be much deep memory diving to be performed for those of you who were caught in the thick of the action and experienced the Dimensional Shift in semi-trance states.
The final segment of the session required Aion and Chuen to connect breaths and fuse their etheric bodies into a disc-shaped ball of Light. By this means Chuen piloted his beloved father to a Midway Station where a lively conference was in progress.
Aion had attended a few of these celestial powwows before, even in the Old Reality. But the impressions had usually faded like fax images by the time he regained "normal" consciousness on the physical plane. On this occasion Aion was thrilled to return with the energy imprints intact. He felt euphoric and supercharged.
Noia had sneaked up and squeezed herself between Aion and Chuen on the hammock. She giggled like the child she still was in particularly happy moments, hair wet from the waterfall. "Liars! I waited an hour for you two to show up! It was getting too cold."
"Eeesh! You're cold and wet!" Aion yelled, biting her on the nape of her elegant neck. Chuen laughed and laid his curly-haired head on his mother's bosom, sighing with pleasure.
After dinner Noia went off with Chuen to the Sanctuary for some deep healing on her leg. It had been slightly deformed by infantile poliomyelitis - a common disease in the Old Reality - but was now rapidly regaining its proper form and function under Chuen's loving ministrations.
Aion decided to treat himself to some virtual 3D loveplay on the Bionet. Life's a ball, as they used to say, and forever may it be so.
...THE BEGINNING...
[Originally published in JOURNAL ONE, May 1996 © Antares. First posted 2 May 2007, reposted 27 December 2017 & 24 December 2020]