Black Jack (11 page)

She clasped her palms to her cheeks. ‘Oh my God! Black, your hands,’ she cried. ‘They’ve straightened out.’ As if unable to believe her own eyes, she grasped his hands in hers and examined them closely. ‘It’s a miracle,’ she whispered, kissing them repeatedly and reverently. Suddenly she stopped and frowned. Her fingers left his hands and moved swiftly over his body. She raised an incredulous face to him and declared, ‘I know you’ll think I’ve gone mad, but with God as my witness, you’re bigger now than you were this morning.’

And God said, ‘Let US make man in OUR Image, after OUR likeness.’

 - Genesis 1:26

The question is who are the ‘us’ and ‘our’?

Black found himself standing on a sun-drenched, yellow and orange-brown landscape. Only a few shrubs dotted the rocky land. Black glanced down at himself.  He was dressed in a long, loose-fitting, white tunic and trousers.  In the empty sky above a lone vulture circled. Black gazed at it in fascination. ‘Where are we?’

‘Persia, Earth time
AD
13. I brought you here to tap into the memories of your own species. In there,’ he said, pointing to a rocky hill behind them, ‘is one of the greatest human seers that ever lived.’

‘Inside the rock?’

‘Is a cave.’

‘But there is no entrance.’

‘That shouldn’t stop you.’

He went up the pathway - it was full of loose stones, which he disturbed not - and walked right through the wall of rocks and mud that sealed the secret entrance, an experience that he had to admit, he thoroughly relished. Inside the air was neither damp nor dank, but cool and fresh. He followed the dim, narrow corridor of roughly hewn rock.

It opened out to a small enclosure, big enough for him to stand upright, but surely too low for the man who sat cross-legged in the light of a single lamp. Dressed in thick, white robes he was bent over his work, which was set on a low wooden table. His fingers were extraordinarily long and tapering, and his feet were bare. There was a stack of leather-bound books on the floor by his side.

At Black’s appearance he looked up, neither startled nor afraid. His beard was long and gray, but his face was rosy and youthful, and his eyes were calm and full of the music of the soul. He had found something special locked away in that cave. He laid down his writing instrument and gestured for Black to come forward. ‘Welcome, welcome. We have been waiting for you, and I, Jahanbakh, am honored to be the one to receive you,’ he said in Coptic.

Black stepped into the weak circle of light. ‘Have you really been waiting for me?’

‘Yes, really. What year have you come from?’

‘2012.’

‘That far forward. Well, well.’

Black looked around the sparse enclosure. Other than an Earthen jug and bowl next to him the small space was completely bare. ‘How long have you been imprisoned here?’

Jahanbakh’s eyes twinkled with amusement. ‘It looks like a prison to you, but this humble hole in the Earth is where I have chosen to lay my eggs in safety.’ He laughed like a child at the expression on Black’s face. ‘All human endeavors of a spiritual nature are eggs. They wait for the right environment to hatch and grow. I will remain here until I finish my part of this work.’

‘What is it that you are working on?’

He pointed to the pile of leather-bound manuscripts. ‘One day when the time is right these works will be discovered in clay jars and be called the Nag Hamadi scrolls. They are crucial to the survival of the human race.’

‘Why do they have to be sealed away?’

‘If they are not, we fear they will be intercepted, destroyed, or, worse, manipulated to serve the ones they seek to expose.’

‘Will you teach me about the fall of man? Why he is no longer the magical being he once was?’

Jahanbakh exhaled a long breath. ‘Ah, you want to know about man’s greatest foe: the Archons.’

‘The Archons?’

‘The primordial ones. Long before the sun, the planetary system, Earth or man was formed, they arose in the depths of the cosmos. A phantom species of inorganic cyborgs, they were spawned of elementary matter. Created in error these first androgynous entities resembled aborted human fetuses with oversized heads, huge eyes, and spindly limbs. These grotesque neonates, in their own bizarre way, were alive and aware, and through the fractal process of endless, self-repeating generation
they emerged as a massive horde or ‘legion’.’

‘Are these neonates you speak of gray
?’ Black had once seen a documentary about the true-life stories of people who claimed to have been taken and tortured by creatures of a similar description. They had referred to them as the Grays.

Jahanbakh frowned. ‘Possibly. They are often pale in appearance and come in the night to abduct souls, but their appearances on Earth must be by necessity sporadic and brief since they are not designed to inhabit an organic environment. Their original habitat was inside
the thread-like tunnels extending from the core of the constellation of the Hunter.’

Inside his head Black heard the translation.
Hunter = Orion
.

‘But as more and more of these shadow beings came into matter, a second variant appeared, an aggressive reptilian humanoid.
One of them, a terrifying, lion-faced, serpentine bodied beast, upon first o
pening his eyes, falsely perceived the limitless quantity of matter around him as his own creation, and arrogantly declared, “It is I, who am God, and there is no other power apart from me”

‘Endowed with the formidable powers of his divine beginnings, this fierce reptile-like mutation rapidly dominated the embryonic order and assumed the role of overlord. The entire Archon colony came alive under his demonic fire. But spiritually blind and fiercely territorial, he refused to obey the place from which he came. This caused the entire species to be cut off from the divine nutritive energy source from which they issued. Unable to generate their own energy the formidable shape-shifters had to become parasites in order to survive. Mind parasites.’

‘Mind parasites?’

‘Yes. Messengers of deception. They descended upon dying worlds like swarms of locusts and consumed them by forcing the invaded population to devolve to lower and lower states of vibration. By chaining those souls in the darkest of conditions of fear and slavery they secure themselves the energy of the invaded populations, not only to sustain themselves, but to enlarge their empire based on their essence of envy, hate, lust for power, selfishness, dishonesty, cunning, devastation, destruction, and domination by whatever methods available. Do you recognize this world I have described?’

‘Are you suggesting that our world has already been colonized by this alien intelligence?’

‘The greatest invasions happen in secrecy. Remember, the parasites must avoid exposure and rectification of their activities at all costs. They want to steal our inner light; and the best way to keep humans from claiming their own inner light is to give them delusional beliefs about their divinity. Who do you think is the arrogant, vicious, demented impostor deity we come across as the jealous God of our holiest of books?’

Black lost his dazed expression. ‘Would you have me believe that God is a fierce, demonic beast?’ he cried.

‘The measure of your surprise is the extent of their success. It would be so easy to pretend that I am the liar and the fomenter of discontent. But think about the gods that have come to humanity. What do you really think of “gods” who demand blind obedience, urge men on to “holy” wars, mandate that their followers smite each other, favor one race over another, punish children for the sins of their fathers, demand animal and human sacrifices, and promise purgatory and hell to anybody that does not bow down to them?’

Black remained silent, but the thought came… If anything slithers like snake.

‘Tell me the truth, my son, do you really think Earth is a divine place being overseen by an infinitely loving God?’

He was standing at the crossroad and being asked to choose. He thought of the blameless animals in the wild, constantly tormented by flies, fleas, parasites, leeches, intestinal worms, and a multitude of other diseases and troubles. He thought of the starving children in Africa and the food mountains in the West. He thought of the wars, the diseases, the environmental pollution, and the unbridled greed and corruption that fuelled the network.  The system was indefensible. He shook his head slowly.

‘Only a blind fool or an evil one could not think up some better arrangement than this vile one with its mechanisms of exploitation, misery, suppression, pain, suffering, and ultimately degeneration and decay. These malevolent living machines have infected the human race with their qualities, and taught us to divide ourselves by artificial means, race, color, gender, nationality, religion.’

‘But what about Jesus?’

‘Remember what he said. “My Kingdom is not of this world.” He didn’t come to redeem mankind by teaching him that he was born a sinner and his only salvation is by the intervention of God; he came to warn us about the mind parasites. But his story has been exploited through censorship and revision to manipulate humans into believing they are unworthy sinners, needing to grovel, repent, and the constant intercession of the Church. You should also know that the cross is a blot on humanity.’

‘How so?’

‘The cross is an ancient emblem much older than Christianity. It is a cube unfolded; an icon of domination and control, and a crest of the Lord of the Horde himself. A cross with a man on it is a trophy, the way a hunter mounts a deer he has killed. We are being forced to worship the symbol of our own enslavement.’

Jahanbakh stopped suddenly. ‘It would appear your time is up.’

‘How do you know that?’

Jahanbakh let his eyes move to the candle flame. ‘When you came the flame stopped moving. Time stopped for me. Now the flame is beginning to flutter. Soon it will start dancing again.’

Black noticed what he had not before. How still the air was. It was as if he and Jahanbakh were inside a painting. The frozen flame spurted once and suddenly came alive. Black wasn’t even given the time to stand up and walk out of the cave. He was sucked out so fast Jahanbakh became a blur. The last words he heard were, ‘Beware the shape-shifters. They can take - ’

Where can I find this man named god?
I thought my slave days were over.

 - Joshua Udeh

Black found himself on a beautiful white beach, dressed in a pair of Bermuda shorts. The sky was dotted with fluffy clouds, the sun was shining brightly, and the sea was a calm azure. A luminous figure was standing with his back to him at the water’s edge. Black went to stand beside him. Silently, they stood looking out to the horizon.

‘Why did you bring me here?’

‘I thought you might like to walk on water.’ Green’s voice was neutral.

‘Not me; I only ever wanted to stand in it,’ Black said sadly.

‘Close your eyes and turn your face up to the sky.’

Black did as he was told, and he felt the warmth of the sun on his face and body, and the warm water lapping at his bare feet. He listened to the sucking sound of the silky water in the sand as the waves went back out to sea. It was more delicious than anything he had ever imagined and yet within him yawned a great emptiness. There was so much he did not understand.

‘Take any form,’ said Green.

Black opened his eyes and looked at Green. ‘What?’

‘Just giving you back the words you lost. “Beware the shape-shifters. They can take any form.’

Black closed his eyes. ‘Where are we?’

‘A billionaire’s private island. His flamboyant house and staff are on the other side.’

Black wriggled his toes and grasped grains of sand between them. A simple pleasure, yet incomparably wonderful. He felt like Cipher in
The Matrix
. He knew it was only an illusion, but so what? All his life he had only ever longed to be reincarnated as a normal person.

‘Reincarnation is the goal of those who don’t transcend, and human enlightenment is the Archons’ greatest disappointment,’ Green said softly.

Black took a deep breath. ‘Will you tell me how they defeated us?’

‘Of course. When man was created the Lord of the Horde was instantly and insanely envious of him. This is the first and most significant trait of the parasite - envy. He desperately wanted to own the rainbow of inner colors man possessed, but despite his unsurpassed imitative skills and his impressive demonic abilities, the horde’s own inability to concentrate, create, or sustain intentionality meant for eons they remained powerless to access the three-dimensional dream world of love, wisdom, and peace that humans wove with their every thought and action.’

Black turned to Green. He had turned away from the horizon and was facing him.

‘Their moment to be “the authorities that rule over man” arrived when the dwellers of another dying planet, a ruthless race of self-serving master geneticists, who the Archons had earlier corrupted, fought a great war over Earth. Earth was and still is much prized for its abundant production of raw material and “food”. When the master geneticists became the new owners of Earth, the human DNA, that extremely complex living information program, billions of times more sophisticated than all of your most advanced computers put together, was rewired. Every multidimensional property was shut down, trapping the new human being into only 2 percent of his conscious mind.’

‘If they only came for the resource, and the human being is the best producer of it, anyway, why did they have to do all that?’

‘A being that can leave its physical form at will and be in more than one place at the same time cannot be controlled to produce what they wanted - red sludge. The original vehicle of experience had to be intercepted and damaged beyond use. The human race became the unwitting participant in a great experiment where their own DNA was turned into their prison cell. A smaller brain that was specifically programmed to react to external stimuli and become evil, unless the consciousness within actively prevented it by an act of free will, was fitted in. The body was then purposely reorganized to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Hard-wired with reflexes to serve only the gross needs of the body, the divine beings forgot that they were consciousness within physical vehicles and different from their bodies. Their awareness became only the awareness of their bodies. Beyond their skin they did not exist.'