Seasons of Heaven (28 page)

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HEAVEN

REYNALD’S OFFICE

Reynald was hurriedly gathering documents off his desk, shoving them into larger books so that he could carry them with him. He was trying to take as many as he could, grabbing the important ones first….

An anxious looking man stuck his head into the office and asked, “Are you coming? We are waiting for you!”

“I am coming!” Reynald snapped back. He was agitated as he stuffed the rest of what he had in his hands into his bag. He followed the man out into the magnificent, bright landscape. He was at the top of the city with about twenty other people.

“Pardon! Please, listen to me… This day is a particular day. A man appeared in Heaven without being asked to do so! You see, we cannot completely control nature; it has its own ways. This man is dead here, in Heaven. Normally that’s not possible, only the dead can come in here. However, this is what happened, he is dead here and that means that we could have been wrong…”

“Where did he come from?” a man asked. “He brought a horse with him…”

“It doesn’t matter! What’s important is you! Start over, build a similar place, other civilizations need hope. They need you.

“You are leaving us?” was the question of numerous voices at once.

“No, this is merely a shift in power… you can do it better than me…” Reynald told them.

“What do you mean…?” was the question asked by the voices almost in unison.

“Please calm down. You have to carry on. Find another place and bring hope into it. I have to stay here…”

“Who will guide us?” One of the men asked.

“She will … You knew that would happen one day, Titias! Come here, it is your turn…Guide them well!”

“I will do so,” the beautiful woman said.

“But what do we do with … you know … with the Banished?” the man asked.

“I am the only one responsible,” he said. Then after a long pause he said, “They are staying here. When you leave, I will lock the keys! And now, go! Hurry, to the Infinity Field!”

Everyone took their personal effects. They would be heading south to the place they’re supposed to leave from…Infinity Field. It’s a door that makes it possible to travel in time and space. What’s left of the Ancient’s were about to do that…travel beyond death. 

After they were gone Reynald returned to the city. He made his way down the stairs, jumping on each fourth step. He arrived to the ground floor and pushed a door that was hidden so well that one who didn’t know it was there would hardly notice it. He entered a long corridor and came to another set of steps that went down.

The second set of stairs led him down about three hundred feet into the dark. They ended outside and he was back in the forest. The exit his itself underneath the vegetation. Reynald created this place; he knew all of the details.

He headed quickly west then, the south tower coming into view as he did. Its ochre color along with the rocks that floated mysteriously around it gave it a surrealistic quality.

As he exited the forest he faced a flat stone lying on the ground. On either side of it was a big statue, a Moai made on the Rapa Nui Island and brought here by those that helped him create this place. Reynald pushed on the stone. It resisted because of the tangled vegetation but suddenly opened up.

There were more stairs and Reynald went down them. These stairs ended in a room that was over two hundred and fifty square feet. There was a mirror in the center of the room about three feet high by six feet wide. It shone as bright as a star in the clear night sky. It used to be the heart of the vessel…a sort of hydrodynamic magnetic engine…a secret source of energy. The engine was capable of recognizing feelings and thoughts, technology that was coveted by humans. This was the main thing that made the construction of Heaven possible. When Reynald got closer to it the mirror turned off. The light ceased to emanate and the ground began to shake. The towers and the keys were locking themselves.

“Maybe one day… You will reactivate yourself. I hope you will feel their hope, their despair, their sadness…” he said.

He took the path upstairs towards the exit and once outside he put the flat stone back on the entrance. He had to leave now. He knew that without its heart this place was dangerous. It would begin to eat up his and anyone else here’s thoughts. It could easily drive a person mad. Reynald had never found the solution for that problem.

“We are only souls in this place and if the soul cannot share its feelings with the surrounding nature, it is lost,” was how he explained it.

Reynald came back to the lower entrance of the city, not far from the dock. He took a bunch of keys out of his pocket and opened the small door.

He entered a room that looked like a small hut. He pushed in on another door and entered another small room. In the middle of the room lay a man. The man was maintained in an artificial coma, he was breathing using artificial breathing assistance. Through the astral journey, he was connected to someone else on the Earth. Two cables exited his spirit and outside the cabin, plunged into a splendid lake. 

Reynald had created this system as an emergency way to go back to the Earth.

Now, all the books and notes he had in his bag were a real treasure of knowledge. He was nervous but happy at the same time, about to see the planet he cherished so deeply. He couldn’t take anything with him. He had to memorize everything. Even if he had left his original plans on the Earth, he disposed of the documents on the walls and started reading all the information out loudly. For the next twenty minutes his highly effective brain was in maximum focus.

He took two cables and his shoulder bag and then he ran and jumped into the lake. He plunged more and more deeply and finally he lost consciousness.

This wasn’t Reynald’s first experience with astral travel. He knew that once his body reached an optimal level of relaxation as it had now, his consciousness would simply be lifted from his body. He would be aware of things then, but outside of his physical body. He would be free then to float weightlessly and to see things from a different vantage point. The world when he was on an astral journey held no boundaries and seemingly no time. The places between the beginning of his journey and the destination held only calmness and beauty and light.

GREENLAND

Once at his destination Reynald would again lose consciousness only to be pulled back into it by the freezing cold of the water around him. He was completely submerged and overhead he could see ice that was inches thick making an essential tomb of the water. Reynald knew what to look for however and when he found it, he began to swim upwards towards it. There was a perfect round hole in the ice. The hole was just large enough for Reynald to pull his body up through. Once he was on top of the ice he reached up and opened the door of the office that was carved out of ice. It was a part of the landscape and if one didn’t know it was there, it was hardly visible. Once inside, Reynald dropped to the floor. Every one of his muscles ached and as he lay there on the floor drooling he was “waking up.” He finally got up slowly, holding his head in both of his hands. He felt sick and began to vomit. He tried to grab any receptacle to use it, but in vain. He coughed hard; the travel was more than exhausting. It used every muscle and nerve fiber in his body and placed a great deal of stress on them. He vomited an orange liquid, a kind of ectoplasm, energetic rejection that appeared during the astral journey. He did it before only once and it was just as violent.

He was in his office which resembled the one he used in Heaven. The other twin was lying on a stretcher, connected to numerous cables. Reynald got close to the wall and began stripping of the wet clothes he was in. He was freezing. Once he’d gotten them off he took a thick towel and dried himself off from head to toe, using friction to warm his aching cold muscles. He wrapped himself up in a thick, thermal blanket and sat for a while until his body temperature had returned to almost normal. Then he went over to the closet against the wall and took out dry clothes. he put on thermal long underwear first and then pants and a long sleeved shirt. Then he put on snow pants that had a bib that connected over his shoulders like a pair of overalls. He slipped on a heavily padded jacket then, a thick hat with ear muffs attached, insulated boots, gloves and then a scarf. He opened the door and in front of him as far as he could see was the icy desert. The snow was all around and the temperature is under -20°C. The building he just left resembled a metallic dome.

He took the path in front of him. On his right he saw the housings of the Inuit’s. He always appreciated the people living close to nature. He stopped in front of a small house and rang the bell. A man came out, they know each other. The two of them exchanged a few words in Eme-sal, a fine version of the Sumerian language.

Reynald entered the courtyard, and the man disappeared into the house. He came out again right away accompanied by five sled dogs. They were magnificent, resembling wolves.

Reynald stroked their heads and attached them to the sled. It took only a few moments to get his means of transport ready. The two men exchanged few more words before saying goodbye.

The sled got moving very fast, the five animals were particularly strong. Reynald had to go to the city of Nuuk and start his new life there as a terrestrial. He knew that he had to be careful not to lose his way in the middle of this white plain. He took all he needed to nourish himself and to make a fire. The journey was going to last at least a dozen days.

During the journey, he started writing down all the information he had memorized before leaving Heaven. His account started like this… 

“This story will let you travel through time, live the life of different characters, immerse yourself into the different periods and various religious beliefs that exist. You will live through the eyes of many innocent people. The hardness of my tale takes its roots in the obscurity of the evil locked up on our planet, the evil which expresses itself in the desire of men to seize power over other people. But as long as the physical evil exists, its opposite has to exist as well, in order to keep the balance between both of them. All the choices made by love serve as the shield against the evil. Through life and death, between the earth and Heaven, through time and seasons, men and women have to untangle the mystery of this grievous story. In this compendium I will mention, as precisely as my memory permits it, the moves and the actions of these heroes that created this unique feeling, proper to their species: love.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“DESTINIES COLLIDE”

JAPAN

Tonobu “Roshi” traveled to the ancient temple in the center of Hamanashi City.

The streets were calm, and the moonlight seemed to freeze everything that tried to move. Henchmen from the Roshi clan had come to get rid of him. What was supposed to be simple revenge was about to become a terrifying slaughter. Tonobu was a strong warrior, but armed with the legendary katana he was virtually invincible.

He entered the temple gently, assassinating a few men and disemboweling them. The fight lasted a few hours and many of the men he killed never even saw him coming.

At the center of the temple was a garden where the final confrontation took place. Each dead henchman from his own clan left a trace of himself in Tonobu’s spirit.

In the garden he created a moment of panic. The temple was completely devastated and the final fight took place on a white floor, with only a few trees left.

After the confrontation, Tonobu escaped his village, leaving dozens dead in his wake. He himself was injured.

He took his horse and headed north, setting out on a long journey. Still losing blood, he arrived at the old sanctuary. He arrived at the entrance just as he loses consciousness. 

The darkness turns to blinding light as Heaven appears and then fades away. Eddie Tonobu knelt inside his temple sanctuary praying to his God…

DAKOTA

Buddhist Temple

Eddie exited the Buddhist temple of the city he was in, Dakota. The police units were waiting for him; he was determined to end this enquiry today.

Numerous amounts of evidence gathered in New York and in Little Rock made it possible to find the suspect. Now at last came the moment to arrest the killer.

There were two dozen police cars and the US Marshal truck.

Eddie got into the car and he could feel the tension. It was thick enough to cut with a knife.  A few miles between the center of the city and the small cabin felt like an eternity.

A helicopter could be seen in the air, following the dozen police cars as they headed up the narrow trail to the cabin. The police arrived at full speed and skid to a halt in front of the small, discreet cabin.

Eddie opened the car door and put his foot out on the ground.

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HEAVEN