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The Matrimandir was empty at this time of night, deserted by the occasional late devotees, and only silently browsed by the maintenance robot.

Its exterior was shaped as a sphere covered in gold — well, not entirely yet. It was first built to be the heart of the future city, and to this date, partly a work in progress, half-coated with the gold foils of discarded satellites and other space craps.

The interior was rather large now, and air conditioned, though it was probably smaller and hotter in the past — John never had the curiosity to look at the archives, he’d known it like this since he was a child. It was meant to be a sacred place, or a place of simple beauty, which was odd, when you thought about it.
All around them was infinite space, boundless opportunities to connect to the great mysteries beyond, and quite frankly, this was often scary as hell. Maybe that’s what this place meant, a safe retreat, like a bubble with only a thin wall of soap dividing space between here and out there, but open for the world to see.

He’d brought another batch of water-stones, and opened the hatch below the meditation altar. When he jumped the last rug of the ladder, his boots landed in a splatch of water. Something had changed. The rate at which the stones were exuding water had increased. He would have to move them again after the next commercial shuttle departure. He couldn’t risk the Consortium getting notice of this… Not yet, not before they figured out what it meant.

Prune was listening to Maya and Yz, not daring to talk, much less to disagree.
Yz was back to the planet from her maintenance drill on the mothership, and had found their remote outpost overloaded with new clueless settlers.
Now, even Maya, who was always the understanding one was fuming at the vexing situation and couldn’t help but complain about the new Mars settlers’ manners (or lack thereof). The matter was of importance, but somehow Johnny couldn’t help but find it hilarious.

“Johnny! Stop laughing, it’s not at all funny!”
“I’m sorry, it’s the nerves!” he replied “I didn’t want to poke fun at your horror story, Mum.”
“You damn right, it IS a bit of a horror story. Well, I don’t know what kind of a story it is. These new settlers that moved here are disorganized conflict and chaos all the time. And now nobody has a permit for sand scooter but me. So everything I do takes me 6 times as long with everyone else… and its hot!”

She paused a little, smiling at Prune, then turned to Yz, who seemed equally annoyed by the recent mess.

Prune ventured a word “But you really love the idea of cooperative community sharing, don’t you.”
Maya nodded, then continued “but it sucks! IT SUCKS!… and it’s all a bit weird too. It’s a daily juggle with what I’m willing to say yes to, and where I draw the line and say no.”

She sighed. “But some of it is fun, obviously. But much of it isn’t. I think everyone is struggling with finding themselves disconcertingly in a totally new place.
The new place for me is never being alone to do anything, where before I almost always was, and really wanted people to do things with. But they are LATE and I can do things on my own easier.
I prefer being a hermit while preaching about community. And doing things my own way while pushing for cooperation!”

It didn’t help that Maya had agreed to help organize the event for Mother Shirley (though the party had changed the event location to the nearby fancier townlet of Romars without notice, instead of their rugged but peaceful village).

The event had attracted the usual throng of nuts and illuminated sycophants, which would have dissolved just as well, if not for an unusual occurrence: Mother Shirley had claimed to have a divine vision by merging consciousness with the AI of the ship. She had seen floods and rains. Image that! As if water on Mars, was not ludicrous enough, now floods!
All of a sudden, all hell broke loose and the religious nuts managed to create a panic, and had loads of people rush for the higher ground… Well, you guessed, to their previously quiet outpost.

Of course, she had said nothing of the water-rocks she and John had found. Better not to encourage the nutters.

Strange new place, indeed…

The young Yz looked with disbelief at the new girl. “What on Mars are you on about? Psychic archaeology? Come on Lizette, you must be joking. Barely 30 years is hardly enough to produce archaeological artefact of any interest, no?”

Yz had been called up to the mothership to participate in the maintenance drills, as part of the regular knowledge exchange program between Earth and Mars.
She was quite eager to see the central intelligence (“FinnPrime” as she liked to call it), a technology which had not yet been brought to the surface of Mars to date.

At first, Lizette had seemed like an interesting new friend. Very feminine and glamourous, with a flair of Earth fashion to her, something quite attractive.
But as soon as she started to talk, Yz realized how little they had in common.

That girl is going to have a tough call back to reality when we land… she thought while smiling to the giggling Lizette.

Karthik was feeding some nonsense to the AI, while inspecting the logs of the central intelligence.

Finnley was listening with great interest to the teleporting stories of Togi Bear in Outlandis that he was spinning.

Dear Lord, he said after his maintenance routine was over, I wish they had an opening for creative writing, so that someone else can take this silly job. Blathering all this nonsense is exhausting.

Sadly, it was known to be the only thing that would keep the AI evolving and learning, and operating the mothership.
New information to sort and sieve through was the AI’s purpose. As much as humans were feeding off food, they fed off information.

Finnley’s tirade stirred something in Godfrey.

He may not have completely given voice of the thought in his head, but it made him realize that the thought of quitting for something different had been here all along.
He liked Elizabeth well enough. To be honest, such caring for an ungrateful and volatile lady was borderline devotion, but still, it wasn’t about that.

I wanted to change the world, and Elizabeth vision of greatness and madness alike was, for a time, something he could fall in line behind and support with passion.

Through visionary books, to open the minds of the pleb to the realms of possibilities, ah! no matter how deliciously delirious and quaint such possibilities seemed. That was a grand epic in budding.

And then, after so many years of relentless editing, copy-writing, and of course maid after maid interviews, all there was left? Unbridled madness and tyranny from the well of grandiose ideas that Elizabeth had been, and to some extent still, was.

In fact, Godfrey had stifled his own creativity by falling in line behind the writing giantess. There were timid attempts at writing his own story, and only piles of old notebook to account for it.

Purpose, Truth, Action those were the magic words…

“Oh, bugger it Liz’. I quit.”

How’s that for action? Another thread would do me good. Like to see what life’s brewing on Mars.

Soul loss and soul recovery
Whenever you are in a situation with intense pain, grief, loss, or intense joy, excitement, you may lose part of your soul, or vital energy, it’s also called dissociation by the psychologist. You usually do it to make it stop, or it is an automatic action to stop the intensity of what’s going on.
You separate yourself form an aspect of yourself, and you are not aware of it, most of the time. It can manifest as chronic fatigue, depression, feeling numb, addictive behavior, etc.
In order to get back this energy, you have to reclaim it. And as a shaman, you do it through the process of soul recovery. Today you’re going to learn how to do it.
It is relatively simple. First, you are going to go in the lower world, find your main power animal. Thank it again for all that it does for you and ask them if they are the one to help you in the process of soul recovery. If not, ask them to lead you to your soul recovery animal. When you get acquainted to this new animal, you can ask them their name, and how you can call them when you need them. Thank them for their help and presence with you.
When you do a soul recovery, you may not know what you are going to recover. You may not really know what you have lost, or you may not be aware of symptoms. Just tell your Soul Recovery Power animal (SRPA) that you want to recover a part of your soul that you are missing at the moment. They’ll guide you through the process. Follow them, trust them.
They may take you through different places or spaces and times to go find that lost soul piece. It may be from your childhood, from another life, or dream situations.
You are going to be presented to that piece of your soul and you have to ask them what happen. Most of the time they are frightened and don’t want to come back. You have to convince them, and ask them what you have to do to show them that you’ll not do the same “mistake” that make them leave in the first place. It may require you change something in your behavior, in your attitude toward certain things, it might be simple or huge. Depends on what you find. And it’s up to you to see if you’re up to the challenge.
you can also take some time with your power animals to get to know them better and learn from them.
If you don’t know how to manage the situation with the lost piece of soul, you can ask your soul recovery power animal to help you do the “negotiation” part
but you’ll have to do what’s required by the soul so that it comes back definitively sts
If you still have time, you can go on a second recovery.
And remember, this is not a race, take your time, don’t rush, enjoy the journey.

Eric
Before the music starts, I have the feeling of “Nagini” my snake power animal: it’s looking patiently at me with golden eyes. I also get the first impression of a spirit panda as a soul retrieving power animal. There are two aspects of it, a docile and friendly one, and another more fearsome, they seem to shift depending on his mood. As the music starts, I sift through few fleeting impressions (one of a lemur), then some stronger.
The panda comes back but I also have other animals who seem to present themselves in order, as if in different directions, and I remember there are no rules as their number, so I let myself welcome them. The panda is on the right, it seems connected to childhood memories, (call it “Panda”) then, on middle right, there is a spider (“Anansi”), it connects to the jumping spiders I’ve seen a few times the past days, and
one this morning I put outside instead of letting it drown.Middle left, coming from above and perched on a tree, there is a firebird/phoenix (“Fawkes”). There is another one, I remember a bit later that appeared further left, as if from the direction behind me, it’s an ape (“Hanuman”).
The serpent circles around them. I have the impression I can choose any of them, and they will lead me to different realizations, and I have the impression of the buddhist emanations, where enlightened being manage to split themselves into many as one. So I decide to ride them all at once. Actually, I start with the first three ones, and as I ride on the land, I suddenly remember the ape which was very discrete initially,but seems to be willing to show me stuff too.
The land we ride into is dark, almost volcanic in nature, as if scorched. There are trails that spread to different directions, and each ride goes down one of them. There are various visions, moments and memories from the past connected with strong emotions.
At one end, there is a little boy that shoots magma out of his incandescent body. It irradiates the land through veins of lava, and as it cools down it darkens the land even more. He seems to be caught up in a circle of rage or fear, fear of never seeing the light again. I listen to him without words, and realize he’s afraid of letting go.
I’ll show him the light is covered by his own cinders, and he needs to cool down and let nature grow back again around him, and I’m showing him I’m willing to help. It seems to resolve as light opens in the sky, and a tree starts to grow again… At the end, I seem to connect the scene to certain memories.
There is another one that comes in, where the ape is doing a certain pose where it walks on its hands. The posture catches my attention, as if to remind me of something. I’m encouraged to turn around to see the world as it sees it. As I do it, the world changes and spins, and the music starts to indicate the end of the trip. I thank the animals and finish with the snake before leaving…
the end
well, it’s very condensed, there was lots happening
It’s like I was doing many stuff at the same time

Flove
(no recollection)

Jib
I have difficulties stabilizing my attention first, there is this kind of veiled perception I’ve been having lately. As I call my power animal for soul recovery I have a strong impression of a bear and then a raven. There is a kind of snake too, and I also feel a wild boar. I refocus back on the whale and say I’ll come back later. The whale leads me in the depth of the earth to a magma chamber. It becomes scrambled again and I just take a moment to refocus on my penguin.
First soul recovery
I ask him to find the piece of soul that would be best for me to recover now, and we go fly above something. The penguin flies like a rocket, super fast. I soon find a kid feeling presence. I have no real visual, and I keep having visuals of lemur, or raccoon interfering.
Then I feel that the presence is also camouflaging behind projections to be left alone. He left me when I was little, around 8 because the world seemed to disappointing. I have some difficulties at first to convince him to come back with me, and I show him what I’m already doing that’s fun and that’s worth doing and exploring. After a while, he agrees and I feel a nice warm feeling inside my belly as he is reintegrating me. I thank him for coming back. The only thing I need to do is take the time to reassure myself when the world seems too dangerous.
Visiting the bear and the raven
Then I decide to go back visit the bear and the raven.
I’ve already seen them before and they seem to be there for me. There is an impression of power with the bear and also mother here for her kids. With the raven, it’s more a mystical stuff, and the power of observation and seeing through things.
I am offered a kind of raven skull symbol of power and energy manipulation staff or something like that. I take it and it feels quite powerful, I have the impression the energy or the “spirits” would follow it when I demand it. Like make blocked energy move.
Second soul recovery
I decide to do a second soul recovery and ask the whale to lead me. I have the impression of changing plane, the focus is different, I am more on the middle world, and we go somewhere icy like Antarctic. Maybe near a shipwreck. There is a man, depressed and gloomy. I begin to ask him why he’s here, but he seems to want to come back and don’t ask anything. I feel very warm and loving. The drums begin to beat the return and I thank everyone for participating and come back. Saying I’ll take time to assimilate.
Eric’s account remind me of a few stuff
that reminded me a few stuff too because at one time I had to follow a spider and with the raven I flew over a magma land and the raven became a phoenix to be able to fly because it was so hot
thanks I forgot that

Tracy
went down the stone steps, the unicorns on the left looked up as I passed. Zebra joined me from the right, said thanks but forgot his name! Then a white bear joined me, said his name was Waldo (or at least that name would do for now, impression)
He was huge but was very light on his feet the whole time. Came to a tall tree with a single very red apple on it. The white bear scampered up the tree and I followed. Various other fruit but mainly the red apple stood out.
At the top of the tree leveled out to a large plaza with gameboard design, the white bear demonstrated frolicking from one part to another playfully leaping in lightness.
Flash to me as a small child being woken up in the night by concerned parents for nasty medicine for chicken pox.
Same house but in the field behind, me as a small child alone by the wigwam of sticks dad made, frowning, alone. Next door to the neighbours pond, frozen over. White bear kept dancing on the thin ice part that we didn’t skate on, huge heavy bear, such a light step didn’t break the ice
Zebra was hanging around incidentally, kept feeling reassuring warm breath and muzzle on my shoulder. Breathing restrictions started, left the pond, down a path in the woods, came to a fork. Went left ~ papers everywhere, letters, words, snowed under with words and letters, monkeys pulling sheafs and sheafs of letters and papers and words.
Then a school of tiny silver fishes swan inside me and started chomping at all the letters in my solar plexus and spewing out coloured threads and ribbons from my mouth.
Breathing difficult. (several times just sank into intense colours for awhile with no imagery, plenty purple and green). I started doing sort of swimming motions with my arms with the breathing and fishes, had a sudden blast of energy in the chest and then later a much stronger one just before the video ended.
I should add the impression of less thinking/intellectualizing, less buried under a mountain of words, in favour of more purely physical expression

“What? You don’t have a plan?” Terry, Consuela and Maurana let escape a small cry of despair.

It was a bit difficult to guess where Sadie was, with the invisibility and everything dark around. At least, they had found out that when she held one of Terry’s fluorite crystals, she would glow very faintly under UV light.

“Well, no.” Sadie said, not making an effort to lower her voice. After all, why should she, she was invisible. Or just faintly glowing. “I just wanted to check on you guys, and maybe enjoy the view a little, I guess.”

“That’s so unfair!” The Queens were really outraged. Sadie should have been appalled by the treatments of the Anna Purrna, and if anything, should have already planned a thousand pranks she could have easily pulled off with her invisibility cloaking.

“I’m sorry to break it to you guys, but I know at least one of you just turned 20, and the others are not so far behind. You’re not going to be teens for all of your life. Time for you to grow a beard, well, a real one Consuela, if you know what I mean….” Sadie was getting emotional. “Nobody else than you can fix your own problems!”

In the darkness, under the eerie purple pinkish black light, tears could be seen glistening faintly.

Second Journey ~ August 24th, 2014

Duration 24 minutes

Directions : Meet with your power animal, ask them to lead you to the upper realm to meet with your guide. Ask the name of your guide and what they will be likely helping you with. Ask them for your personal symbol and how you can use it. Then follow your power animal into showing you the potential development for the stories.

Accounts

Eric
My snake animal guide appears very fast, I see its eyes first. It shifts into a powerful cobra, and fans out its hood into multiple heads, like Ananta (Shesha Naga), and says I can call him Nagini (like in Harry Potter, that’s also the playful name I give to the plush snake at our doorsteps).
It wraps its multiple heads around me like a ball, and we woosh into the ground to what I guess is the underworld, it seems like a long coiled path around a sort of vortex, after a few moments in a sort of crystal cave, I’m a bit skeptical what we’re doing there, I catch a glimpse of a white horse from the back, so I guess Jib’s Conan is checking on us, and restate my intent.
I go though the light of one of the brightest glowing crystals, and the travel resumes, this time like the giant snake wraps ourselves in coils around a column of rocks, and we climb that high mountain very fast. It reminds me of Mt Meru in Buddhism or the Immortals palace in the Chinese Buddhist tales (like in the 2014 movie The Monkey King).
The place is like a beautiful platform/palace of giant proportions, with a golden light. When we arrive, the snake becomes much smaller, and golden too, and wraps itself around my left arm. It guides me to explore different places, a temple, a place over the clouds where there are dances, etc. I decide to rest under a tree and meditate and be open to possibilities.
The snake shifts around in various forms as if to reflect the nature of my mind, a giant parasol, or a stream of many paths at my feet. It connects me to a picture I saw of a Buddhist painting where the mind represented as an elephant is led by the monkey brain around a snake-like path. I realize the person I saw briefly earlier is the guide that helped Sunwukong (the monkey king) and seems to be the guide I’m looking for.
(I find the name later is Puti or Subhuti).
When I mentally ask for a name, the name Pachacamac comes strongly. He shows me many things related to my symbol. As a spinning cube with the floating feather in the middle and the arrow pointing towards the heart. The spin of the cube creates illusion within illusion, the arrow wobbles but stays towards the heart.
He shows me a chasm and how to create a bridge over the clouds, by showing me the mirror image in my heart chakra. The bridge is built inside. At the same time, I was trying to focus on the music to deepen the trance, and realized outside (one storey below) was Jib’s music played on the speakers, aligned with the one playing in the headset, although a few seconds off, the rhythm was perfectly in synch…
He also shows me another image, of a deep well deep inside the mountain that we can see from above the clouds. The image inside is dark and fluctuates with the water’s surface, and also reflecting quite a small portion of the beautiful landscape around.
He explains that the well is the world we create, the mind and the perception is the water’s surface. It’s the external world, while the heart is all that we perceive as we discuss.
There are other things shared at a subjective level.

Francie
After I connected with my power animal, we went to the upper world. We went through water to get there until we came to land.
I asked for my main guide.
I think I took on the characteristics of my guide. by that I mean I felt myself become a different being, and then switched back and forwards between myself and the other. It was very clear. The other was masculine, strong, very alert, very watchful, powerful.
I asked for the guide’s name and received the answer, Carlos.
I asked for the area which the guide would work with me. I have had a sharp pain in my left abdomen under my rib for half an hour. I felt my guide reach in and do something energetically in that area. The pain left and has not returned.
I asked for a symbol and saw what looked like a key-hole shape.
There was a key too.
It was a very particular shape.
There was a door. And the key hole was up very high in the door.
I had to reach up high to get to it. And I put the key in.
I wasn’t sure if those were symbols.
The key hole and the key were shapes.
I was tracing them with my hand.

Jib
I settle in myself and arrive directly in a kind of lava world. There are stalagmites and magma puddles, it’s very fiery and earthy. Then I call my horse who just nudge my left shoulder, he was already there.
I ride him first and take time to bond with him. Then ask him to take me to the upper realm to Michel. Without much transition I am there, I feel a definite difference of feeling and texture. I say hi and ask Michel if he can show me the use of my personal symbol or particular aspects to it.
The he focuses my attention to the octagon and the connection with the number eight. He shows me how it connects with the musical octave and sounds as a resonator. It can also be used like the shamanic drum. The coil inside is connected with the circle, the spiral and the labyrinth. My symbol is a kind of labyrinth with the diamond representing the central room where the graal is, so to speak.
He shows me other stuff that I don’t recall at the moment.
When I realize that it will be all, I ask my guide if he can introduce me to another guide that can help me with the use of my symbol. He sends me in a direction that goes up in a cave world. There are faceless figures, I don’t pay much attention to them. When I arrive, the guide sits me on the ground and a journey inside my symbol begins. With the octagon connecting quite strongly with the lava and earth again. I am in a lava world again, which is strange. I ask the guide what is his name and I suddenly understand it is Athumbra the Dreamwalker from whom I’m fragmented.
He shows me the connection of my symbol to the fire and earth, and the depth of the world. He suggests me that instead of focusing on the shape of the symbol I connect with how the different parts connects together and to other aspects of consciousness, and how they are representative of my own energy personality. Not try to look outside for an answer in a way at the moment.
So I begin to experience the shapes, and it turns like a clock, take different colors, etc.
This will be something I’ll have to do again.
Then I ask my power animal to show me what would be interesting to me to explore in the story now.
He shows me a nest and I connect it with the stork nests I’ve been talking about in the last comment and that I used in the quote of the week picture. Without consciously connecting the two. I’ve written the comment before making the picture.
It will have to do with how the nest is comfortable but don’t make you learn much about life and your potentials.
Then he showed me something related to ants and colonies, that I connected with Mars, the colonies of Mars. There is something about community and social network for me to explore.
Then I asked him to help me decipher the energy transmission Eric sent to me the other day, and it had something to do with networks again and how we create a space of something through our relationships, the space of love, the space of friendship, and we create fields and connective tissues that we nourish through experience and attention and involvement.
At some point in the beginning I briefly wondered what was happening with you guys and felt propelled into something like water and impression of struggling with current, there were two moon crescents holding together by their “backs”, and purple or pink colors.

Tracy
The Zebra walked towards me across a grassy plain then I circled him, floating, and we went down a slope through the trees, an old road paved with stones. We wound down and came to a great expanse of metallic pink water, like a wise (typo! wide) river.
There was a guy in much heavy stone coloured rough clothes on with a very old face who didn’t look at me, he was on a raft with a long pole for steering. Asked his name and got Frudo. (was slightly skeptical that I got the name right) The symbol was like a clubs of cards, 3 circles interlocking with an in flow of the stem part. Domain was water, flow and fluidity (and dams, apparently).
We went down with the raft on the wide pink river, and the pace increased and there were people of all kinds lining both banks, watching. The wide river came to an immensely steep and deep waterfall, but there were pools and much smaller waterfalls on either side of it. All the water was pink.
We navigated from pool to pool on the right of the waterfall mostly, each pool had people, some of the pools were dammed, and some were more open and easily flowing to the next pool. Some dams were high and some pools had people looking over the edge at the waterfalls below their pools.
In a pool on the right, a very fat pink baby was sitting in the middle, I picked him up and held him and asked his name and it was Ezekial.
Then a fly landed on my right shoulder and I looked to the right and saw a scrunched up face of my mother, with a tight smile. My breathing started to get constricted and I saw mustard yellow mangle of tubes like intestines in that pool.
Then there was a lot of fingers stroking and pulling threads out of the dam around that pool, like pulling soft pink wax. Breathing continued to be restricted, and some becoming vapour or mist stuff that wasn’t very clear or droplets leaping from pool to pool as an alternative route to surface pools and waterfalls….
Then went down down down into a vast pool of pink water, faster and faster towards a narrow tube at the bottom, and then flipped over onto my back and saw the sun far above and rose slowly floating towards the surface.
Several times I saw purple and light green.
The breathing thing was interesting if not so pleasant.
The personal symbol may be connected to the flow from pool to pool somehow.

“We’re going under water, Mandrake, you’re sure you don’t need a suit?” Arona asked her cat.

All she needed was his permission to manifest a scuba diving suit for the cat, but the cat was putting on a brave face, and refused altogether.

“Well then, maybe you want to accompany me under a diving bell, I’m not too reassured on my on” she said with a sweet voice. Reverse psychology always worked with this one.

In no time, they were looking at the underwater cavebed, following the directions of the sabulmantium. The dragon egg enclosing the coloured sand seemed to shield them from the strange effects of the cave, and project fleeting images around the glass bell. Derelict places full of mould and cobwebs, alien places and animals.
Arona resisted being drawn by the images. Her years of living with dragons had taught her to navigate through illusions. That was then that she saw it.
The graceful turtle, silently swimming in front of them, in a curved line up and down, up and down. It was big, much bigger than Mandrake, but in no hurry to get there, wherever there was.

“Arona, do you hear that?” Mandrake’s voice was distant, and the sound of alarm was faint and muffled. “Aronaaaa!”

The impact of the rocks shattered the glass bell in millions of small pieces, that went floating like a wave of particles on the wind. Arona and Mandrake, in the big turtle’s wake were propelled through a narrow gurgling exit of the water that flushed them out of the cave into the thundering noise of a cascade.

Struggling with the current at first, Arona managed to let go, and finally emerged with her cat held firmly by the scruff of its neck. The current sent them on the shore of the pool of crystalline blue waters. In the middle of the pool, she could see the Cup, placed on a red cushion, surrounded by the mist of the waterfall, and glowing a vivid radiant light.

It all seems so easy… Arona was already wet, and the Cup was so close.

“Not so feeest, milady”
She had not seen the man emerge from the shadows of the cliffs. He was looking relatively harmless, but had a wild eye and a vagrant’s appearance.

“Leave me alone, old man.” was all she wanted to tell him. But for someone to be here, of all places, it had to mean something, and she’d better find it out using tact and diplomacy.

“Good day sir, may I inquire what you are doing here?”
“Fer sure, Ey em the Fisher Count but ye can call me Reney.”
“Mmm, I’ve heard about you. So you are real after all.”
“Indeed Ey em, quite real, huhu.”
“DON’T!” Arona and Mandrake shouted almost at the same time… too late, as the blinking parrot reappeared, flying over them and shrieking “HU HU, FUCK FUCK, HU HU.”

“I meant,… DON’T mind the blasted parrot, it’ll go away eventually. It must have a fleck of Sanso, I’m sure.” Arona said, matter-of-factly. “Now, what do I need to do to get to drink from the Cup, dear Sir?” she continued with the best composed smile she could.

“Oh, et is veeely easy, vely vely easy. Ye just need to esk nicely, and as ye already did, there ye go.”

Suspicion and doubts started to come back, as it all seemed much too easy. “What will happen when I drink from it? Will I be able to astral?”

“Oh well, Ey don’t know fer sure, Ey think it is just a nice decoration, but if ye believe herd enough, enything es possible.”

“Mandrake,” she turned to the cat “let’s go do some astralling.”

Even two weeks after the escape, she still woke up in cold sweats, haunted by nightmares of being chased down narrow lanes, or driving a vehicle that would only go at a snail’s pace as soon as she tried to drive it.

“Are you alright, dear?”

The comforting presence of Robert helped sooth her. He brought her a tray with some lemon and cucumber water, knowing it would help with her sore throat. The artificial air of the Mars colony tended to do that.

“Thank you Robert,… but you shouldn’t have. You’re not a robot any longer.”

She still couldn’t believe what had happened. Maybe that was the gift of retirement the Management had in store for her all alone. Unexpected gifts, unexpected islands of solitude —even at the closest to Earth in months, Mars was still 122 million miles from her Russian homeland.

It was still night outside. There, the days were slightly longer than Earth’s by half an hour or so, but she’d adapted to it rather quickly. It was still much better than the torpor on the island where she would loop on her days sometimes without even noticing it.

“Anything I can do for you dear?” Robert looked appropriately sorry for her, not too much to seem condescending, not to little to seem not caring.

“Put on some light music will you. The one from Beethoven that puts me in a meditative relaxation…”

When the deep notes started in the background, she started to relax. Her throat felt fresh and her lungs appreciative of the oxygen produced by the greenhouse plants.
Although she resisted slightly, inexorably she felt drawn to revisit the memories of the last day on Abalone.

It always started with the labyrinth, and finding herself alone.

“Mr R? Mr R?” she called. “Gweenie?”

The labyrinth looked strangely like the laboratory white walls of the Chinese Robot Incorporated Mission Eternal where she used to work as an intern first, then as a head of research for cybernetics advancements. She was quite brilliant for her age, and the prospect of bringing a golden age to mankind was, at the time, quite appealing to her young exalted mind.

She knew where to go. She had to relive again that day where she’d thrown away all of that for a life in hiding. The mysterious benevolent messages of the Management had started a few weeks prior, leading her to question the motives of her employer, and realizing she’d become quite attached to her creation. The prototype robot from Project R had shown never seen before reactions to stimuli, and a learning curve that was exponential. “R” was meant as Retirement: retirement of the last class of labor workers, of those delicate works that still required a human touch.
The Management had led her to uncover that under the Corporation’s vision, the prototype would lead humanity to its doom, becoming irrelevant, a flaw in the perfect design of profit they were looking for. So she’d taken the robot, and made a run for it.
She wouldn’t destroy it. And it seemed the Management had no intention of her to do so. With the Management’s invisible hand, she’d disguised Mr R as a common robot for elites, and led a life posing as an elite with a secret life of a for-hire spy, heist-mastermind, or ghost executioner of similarly exciting prospects.

So there she was again. The walls stretching to infinity in an endless stream of rooms nested one into the other, the fear of being caught creeping closer and closer.

“Stop that. Breathe.” she told herself. She was no longer that young innocent scientist. As soon as her fear dissipated, the rooms stream stopped, and everything was back to focus. She walked to the room she remembered clear as day. Mr R was there, still plugged to the mainframe, with a strange black doctor in a white surgical gown and blue mask she didn’t remember was there.

“Interesting situation you have here.” he greeted her, snapping his gloves to extend his hand to her. “You can call me René, I’m Tahitian.”

She could feel her lucidity fluctuating and ready to explode in a multiplicity of scenarios, but managed to maintain her focus. She refrained to punch the guy in the face too, and simply took his extended hand with caution.

“Congratulation.” he said, beaming. “You passed the test.”

All of a sudden, she was no longer in the same room. She was in the comfortable B&B of 2222. René was in a sofa, comfortably seated, and they were sharing a drink.

“What have you done with Mr R?” was her first thought.

“Oh, nothing to worry about, I borrowed it for a while, there is someone else that needed passing through my maze, and he kindly obliged to help. I will show you in a minute. We had a little conversation earlier on, while you were stranded in your past.”
“How long was I out?” she asked.
“Oh, time is inconsequential here, but in your terms, a day or two.”
“Didn’t seem that long…” she mused. “Where have you done with the others?”
“Don’t worry about them, they are on their own path. Only one should concern you now. A certain Chinese and very persistent man.”
“Oh, fuck.” was all she said. “I should have guessed, you’re with the Corporation.”
“Not at all my dear, you can relax. So as I said, we had a little conversation, and you can be proud of you. This robot has broken through, congratulations. You can be very proud of your work.”
“What do you mean?”
“He has developed a personality and a consciousness of its own. It’s still budding, but it’s very strong, and he’s quite concerned over your well-being I might add.” he said with a wink.

Irina was perplexed at the thought, but although it made some sense at a level, her conscious brain was struggling with the implications.

“Show me what you have to, and release us.” she said to René, getting up from the hypnotizing warmth of the sofa.

“In a minute” he’d say, “just have a look at the screen, will you.”

Then, she’d understood. The guy pursuing her, Cheung Lok was there, trapped in his own labyrinth, trying to catch the robot that always eluded him.

“He would rather die than let the robot go.” she said to René “we could be here for a while”.
“Not to worry ma chère, his timing has no impact on ours. All of this happens in the now.”
“So how this plays out usually?”
“It depends. In this case, all that matters is what happens when he gets the robot.”
“STOP THAT! You can’t let him take it!”
“Calm down, the robot will be safe.”

In the next scene, Cheung Lok was securing the robot, who was pleading with him. “Please! I don’t want to become a hairdresser, let go of me!”
The appeal seemed to have struck a chord, and some memories of Cheung Lok flashed through the screen, and it looked like as if the robot’s struggle mirrored his own to be his own man, free from the expectations of demanding parents, society, Corporation… Their love had been nothing but control, and had put him in chains. He sobbed, wishing for a new life free of these responsibilities.

Irina awoke from the dream again. The last memories were a bit blurry, but still fresh in her mind. René had granted Cheung Lok’s wish. He was sent back to the Island, losing some years in the process, becoming back again a young adult full of unfulfilled desires, and no memory of his previous mission. Before the process happened, he wished for those who were still alive of his platoon to be given the choice to be sent back home with only memories of the robot and himself being destroyed, or to join him on the island, with a fresh future and memories. Surprisingly, most of them chose the first option. Not everyone was ready for a brave choice of facing one’s own desires and power.

As for her, René had been kind to offer Mr R a humanoid body before sending them through the teleportation boxes to the destination of their choices.
Mr R had chosen Роберт (Robert) as a name for his new self (she’d been more than relieved he’d avoided René), and they’d agreed to let the boxes find the most beneficial location for them to go to. That’s how they landed in the middle of the central greenhouse of the main colony, in 2121.

It was fifteen days ago, but still felt like yesterday.

The Zebra
“Zebra energy will help you to take the apparently conflicting parts of your personality and weave them into a pattern which is unique, distinctive and beautiful. As a zebra, the artist within you can live in harmony with the businessperson, the spiritual explorer with the secular decision-maker, the dreamer with the practical goal-setter, neither overpowering the other, each retaining its place of importance and full expression. The zebra will teach you to honor the black and white sides of yourself without compromising yourself into a dull gray.
The zebra will also teach you how to seek out others who are like you, finding comfort and company in groups, while maintaining your own unique identity, your pattern of stripes like a fingerprint, unlike any other. This combination of individuality within community will be a very powerful force in your life.

The zebra energy is also the energy of physical health, long life and great stamina. Breathe in this vital source of very real physical power. Feel how you are capable of running across the plains for hour after hour, each step filling you with vibrant earth energy, so that the more you exercise, the more energized you become. Then just kick up your heals with joy, for you are the zebra, vital and alive. How fortunate you are!”

Cheung Lok felt himself fall suddenly with nothing to hold on to, when the elephant he was riding suddenly shrank to human size knocking him down to the ground, partly unconscious after the event.
This Sanso, sure is 麻烦 [¹]. I must to start to believe harder in my luck was his thought before he lost consciousness.

On the other side of Sanso, a strange man with a turban was struggling with a bizarre striped dog-sized sea cucumber with teeth. Meanwhile, his target, Sanso seemed to leave back to the encampment’s ruins with… his elephant turned… something else.

That was all he could remember when he woke up a few minutes later and wondered what had happened and how Sanso could have slipped away again.
Noticing how he was tracking a man that seemed to make a point at having no discernible pattern, the realization came in a flash of blinding certainty that Sanso knew probably nothing at all about Irina, and surely didn’t care at all about warning her. In other words, Cheung Lok was on his own, and the painful clarity was soothed in equal measure by the other realization that he could let go of this 王八蛋^².

Looking around, he noticed the guy with the turban still struggle with the appetizing stripped sea cucumber.
“Hold steady pal, I’ll ezap that bugger.”
The other who had turned almost purple took a series of short breaths when he was released from the monster. “Thanks mate, those things are my bane.”
“No need to thank me, I’ll deep-fry it for us later. Care to join?”
“Hell why not. Name’s Berberus by the way. And you shouldn’t trust elephants here. It is known.”
“Thanks for the tip, pal. Cheung Lok.”
“You’re going back after Sanso?”
“No, it’s pointless, I just happened to find him on my way to a series of turbulences on the island and couldn’t pass the opportunity, but that one is more slippery than a wet snail during monsoon.”
“What is monsoon?” Berberus asked perplexed by the yellow faced man with the strange accent.
“Don’t you mind that. Shall we go?”

___

[¹] 麻烦 máfan in Chinese, can be roughly translated as ‘irritating piece of hemp’, meaning being trouble or vexatious —or some may argue, in this case, unbelievably lucky and difficult to keep track of, in a continuous way or any other way.

[²] 王八蛋 wángbā dàn : “The King’s eighth egg”, a colourful Chinese way of insulting people, meaning roughly “bastard”.