Chapter Four
Jimbo sat next to Samuel, who ate a fish sandwich ordered up
from the deli below, while Jimbo picked at the salad. He was the real
vegetarian. At least when he was in the mood. He'd had two thick double burgers
for breakfast already, but wasn't about to tell
his good friend that.
"You had two double burgers for breakfast." Samuel
said between bites of his sandwich.
"How'd you know that?"
"A little birdie told me." Samuel said with
amusement.
Jimbo looked to Samuel's window and sure enough a blue bird
was perched on the sill there. it looked at Jimbo, flapped its wings, made a
birdie raspberry and took off.
"So tell me about her."
"Nurse Red?"
"You know...the one who threw me the psychic
curveball."
"Oh that one." Jimbo said, shifting uncomfortably
in his chair.
"Well!"
"Give me a few moments to collect my thoughts."
Jimbo sighed, then looked at Samuel. "She's a distant
cousin."
"God help me should I ever meet a close one."
Samuel quipped.
Jimbo grinned at him. "Me too. They're mean!"
Samuel finished his sandwich, then eyed his intravenous
feed. "I don't need that anymore."
"I'll tell the Nurse." Jimbo said to get up.
"And when you get back and she's taken it out, I want
to know more about this cousin."
Jimbo nodded.
He went outside into the corridor, and made his way to the
Nurse's Station, but it was empty.
"That's strange." He thought, then he went further
down and the next station was empty too.
When he reached the elevators, one of them was standing
open. All he could see was a blackness so thick that it was quite literally
oozing out onto the floor. He started to back up, when a huge coil of swirling
darkness shot at his face.
Chapter Five
"NO!" Samuel shouted from behind and raised both
hands in front of him. They became white hot with power, exuding an
incrementally brighter and brighter blue flame that softly curled about his
body and his arms, making him look like a living bolt of lightning.
The blue curls of light shot forth and collided with the
swirling darkness before it could strike Jimbo.
WHAM!
Samuel shook himself. He was laying on white hot sands in
some kind of desert area. It took him several moments to regain his senses and
realize he was no longer in the hospital. He stood up slowly, his whole body
shaking from the effort. It was then that he noticed his right arm was swollen
and black with poison.
He remembered.
His name was Rama Ananda Dey. He was a High Priest of
Atlantis. He looked down and saw that he was wearing an outfit of pure white,
or rather what had once been pure white, but was now stained with blood and
oozing poison from the wound on his right arm.
His feet were open sandals enclosed in a kind of metallic
cloth that kept firm, even though it was soft enough to rip with the hands. He
looked up and saw an overturned chariot. A Vimana the Indians called it. It was
tilted in the air at a right angle, its side almost touching the burning white
hot sands of Atlan's sea shore. For it was the sea he was next to, but burning.
It was in its last throes before it would sweep back swiftly into the distance,
then come rushing back with an earthshaking roar to engulf him and all of Atlan
or Atlantis that stood behind him.
The Atlanteans referred to themself first as Atlans, then
Atlantians. The last was a vulgar term coined by the barbarians who were
overthrowing the once majestic and powerful land.
He shook with exhaustion and fever. He had enough power left
in the crystal in his left hand to heal himself, but saw no purpose to it. He
could never use the Vimana again. Its power source was corrupted by the fallen
one who lay about ten yards away.
He lay there, a blog of animism and anger. Once a powerful
and good friend, but who had fallen to the Dark Side of the Light and used his
magical powers to ensnare and enslave those less powerful. He had gained a lust for power and his anger had
thrust him into a war that both sides of Atlantis would eventually lose.
In their last years the right and the left had fought with
each other viciously, striving to become the dominant powers in the nation of
Atlans, but finally the political battles had ceased and then the real world
war had begun.
The liberal Atlanteans had sought the aide of the Yellow
Skinned ones to the East and the conservatives the Black and Brown skins of the
West. They had striven nation against nation with mighty and powerful
weapons...most built in Atlantis that had scarred the lands forever and thrust
the majority of the world into an approaching ice age.
The final battle had been done this very day when he had to
fell the man who had once been his brother and best friend. Lei Mand Dey. A
beautiful man in every way. Not a woman alive could ever turn away from him,
but he had never had enough of women or power. He always sought more, and when
he learned his brother Rama was rising in the Great White Brotherhood of Light
he sought to follow, but instead of following the course of Light, he had
quickly managed to secretly pervert it.
At least he thought it was. Rama had seen the direction his
brother was heading and done his best to prevent him, to stop his thrust of
evil, but, in the end it had been a useless gesture and the man had fallen pray
to his lust for power and now that the last missiles of dread were homing in on
Atlantis to sink it forever and the vast oceans rose in fury to engulf it, it
was over once and for all. Long live Atlantis the fallen, he thought bitterly.
He went to his brother's side and slumped next to him.
His brother's eyes opened, but he could not move. He had
fared worse than Rama. "I can't feel anything any more." Lei had
said.
Rama gently rubbed his brother's forehead with soothing
white force. His brother's face cleared and his eyes brightened. "I never
was as kind as you. Nor as wise."
"Wisdom is earned. Kindness is from the heart. One day
you will have both." Rama had told him, smiling.
Then the roar of the returning sea caught both men's
attentions.Their heads averted to watch the skyscraper waves rushing at
hundreds of miles of hour to where they lay on the burning white hot sands of
the beach.
"Will it hurt, brother?" He asked.
Rama shook his head. "No, I will release us before it
strikes."
"Release us?"
Rama sat down the rest of the way and took his brother's
limp right hand between his own. It cost him a great deal of pain, but pain was
coming to an end in any case.
A blur of white energies began to emerge from his skin and
bathe both of them.
"I feel better now." Lei said, even his breathing
becoming more even, instead of ragged
and pained as it had been."
Rama felt tears in his eyes. "In our next lives we will
learn to love one another."
"You mean I will learn to love myself." Lei said
with the hint of a grin, a roguish grin that his brother remembered so well
from when they had both been explorers together.
"Yes. That is so." He told Lei.
"I like the sound of the rain." Lei said, his eyes
closing. "I think I can rest now."
"Sleep well, my brother." Rama told him, gathering
the hand of his brother against his chest, feeling the pain in his arm burning
like a torch through his heart. He felt the pain, but also the love for his
lost friend and brother.
Why men such as they had to struggle so hard to become what
the Light intended he did not know in this life, but perhaps one day.
Then he felt a great shadow rising above him.
He looked up and smiled at the great tidal wave already
dropping towards him and his dying brother. "Long live the Light!" He
said gently, then...
WHAM!
Samuel struggled to hold onto the doorway where he stood
with the intravenous line still dangling from his arm, his butt exposed in the
rear from the nightgown he wore, his whole body shaknig.
Jimbo sat up from where he had fallen and rose to help
Samuel.
"Brother." Jimbo said, the pain in his eyes
obvious as he helped Samuel back to his room. "We really got to get better
jobs."
"I agree. Brother." He said with a smile laugh,
knowing that Jimbo had no idea he really meant what he was saying...literally.
For Jimbo had been the brother who had fallen to the Dark side of the Light and
risen anew, like the Phoenix from its own ashes, to become the roguish Texan
who never let him down.
He smiled inside himself. "I guess something's never
change. We're still getting our asses kicked by the world."
