Welcome To The Real World

Surrounded or Being Watched -- Chapter 1

“I’ve gotten so used to the sound of the wind, I can barely sleep without it,” I told my shrink.

“Then you’re adjusted,” he responded. “That’s good, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess so. I never thought I would get used to it, or living on a prison planet.”

“Don’t think of it as a prison planet, Glen, think of it as a rehabilitation world. It’s a whole world where people who can’t seem to live with anyone else get a chance to learn, and to grow.”

“I can’t see it. I always feel like I’m being surrounded or being watched. And I don’t know why I’m here.”

“You are here to help them grow.” I pondered that. He continued. “You and I are counselors, Glen. We try to steer in the best direction for our clients without forcing or shoving, because forcing and shoving wouldn’t really promote growth, it would only make them want to resist and move in the other direction. Think of yourself as a counselor, or a healer if that sounds better to you.”

“A healer? I’ve never thought of myself as that, since I’m a mercenary who has killed probably hundreds by now, Doc.”

“Sometimes to heal the body you have to remove a limb, or excise an organ. It’s hard, but that’s the way it is on this planet. You know that don’t you?” I nodded. “Good, Glen.” He got out of his chair, walked behind the desk and opened the drawer. He pulled out a business card and looked at it. “I hesitate to give this to you, but…I think you need it.” He extended his hand toward me.

“She is a specialist. More of a spiritual director than a counselor. I think you’re finished with me. You’ve passed the yearly evaluation.”

I stood and took the card. “Thank you Dr. Samuels.” He gave me a nod.

“You are very welcome. And…” he said as I turned to walk out, “the card’s not a requirement, it’s a suggestion. I think you’ll find this young lady very interesting. She’s a spiritual leader who used to have the same questions as you.”

“Interesting,” I said. I turned and walked out. As I pulled the door closed behind me my two friends looked up expectantly. I grinned, clenched my fists, and shouted a silent yes. We headed to the closest bar.

“Told you it was a piece of cake,” Carl said grinning from ear to ear. “All you have to be is honest. Chris gave a quick nod.

“See. You were so nervous. You know they wouldn’t let you go. Who else would they get to come and settle on this rock?”

“That’s true. Seems like a prison to me. I told him that.”

“What did he say?” Carl asked.

“He said it was!” I laughed. They joined in.

“Yes it is. It’s a prison,” Chris said. He sipped his beer. “On a more serious note, what’s next? I mean. Where do we go now? What’s our assignment?”

“We just barely got out with our asses intact. You guys want to go to another war?” Carl asked.

“Not necessarily. That’s why I asked what’s next.” I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out the card the doctor had given me. I held it up.

“Spirituality,” I said. “I’m going to explore my spirituality.”

“Well I’m definitely not down for that,” Carl said. Chris shook his head.

“Think you have to do that one on your own,” he added. “I’d rather dodge laser blasts. That stuff can be dangerous, you know.”

“I didn’t know you were so superstitious,” I said.

“This is a different planet. No telling what you might tap into on some lower or higher vibrational field.”

“What? What are you talking about?” I looked at him in astonishment. “What kind of secret life have you had?”

“Do you think I’ve always been a soldier of fortune? I used to be a Shaman, you know? South American, Peruvian, you know?”

“Are you trying to say every Peruvian is a Shaman?” Carl asked with a grin. I smiled along with him.

“No. I’m just saying that you guys should have known.” He smiled back. I drank my beer.

“Talk about secret histories. I turned to Carl. What were you?”

“A history teacher.”

“Bullshit! You weren’t any teacher.”

“Yes I was, until my whole town got wiped out. I lost a lot of my family in an unprovoked war and wanted to try to set it right. Now here I am. I never thought I would set it right in the Space Force…Jesus. But when I found that ETs had been influencing the politics on Earth so long I decided I had to be here to stop it at the roots.”

“And you believed that ETs were real and had been influencing the Earth?”

“Not at first, but it started to make sense when I started to do research. When I joined the Space Force though, I had no idea how advanced we were and that I would be on other planets. I thought I would be protecting Earth.”

“Well, I guess you are.”

“I guess you are too. I bet Samuels convinced you of that anyway. He’s a cool guy and he is telling the truth. He gave you that card?”

“Yeah. It’s for some spiritual-direction, woman.”

“Oh my God, do be careful,” Chris said. “There are some real crazies around here and the more authentic they are the more crazy.”

She Lifted Her Head -- Chapter 2

I looked at the small shack and then at the card again. It was so far out in the woods it didn’t even have an address anywhere on the house. I walked toward the door as the small stones on the driveway crunched under my feet. Apart from the sound of a small fountain in front of the house everything was dead silent, making my footsteps sound even louder. At first I wondered why there weren’t any birds or insects, and then I remembered that everything was terraformed. The insects and animals hadn’t been planted in yet…not enough of them to really make their presence known, to any extent.

I knocked on the door. A tall thin woman answered. She wore an all white loosely hanging smock and black leggings. She was a bit dark, as though she had come from the Mediterranean area of old Earth, with dark black hair and a long ponytail hanging down her back. Her eyes were very blue…more like gray, which stood out in contrast to her tan skin and black hair. She wasn’t wearing shoes, just white cotton socks. She tilted her head slightly, smiled, and looked at her watch.

“Three minutes late!” She simply said before turning on her heel and heading back in. I followed and closed the door behind. The cabin was small. I stepped into a large living room with a connected dining area. The kitchen was just behind a counter running along the back of the dining room. To the right a small hallway ran off connecting to a bedroom, a bathroom, and who knows what.

“Dump your coat on the sofa,” she said. “And please remove your shoes, if you don’t mind.” She turned to me and smiled for a moment, and then headed to the kitchen. “Would you like a refreshment?”

“No thank you,” I said, removing my shoes and then my coat. I laid it gently over the back of the dark, green sofa.

“Have a seat,” came from the kitchen. I sat on the sofa facing a large wooden coffee table that seemed to be made from the stump of some large tree, polished. On the other side, a love seat with a small brown end table, and adjacent to the left, a matching padded chair. “I’ll be in just a minute.” I looked around the room. It was pretty cozy. She came out carrying a tray.

“In case you want something later,” she said. There were two cups, a coffee pot and several cookies and a few small cakes. She sat them on the table and took a seat on the loveseat across from me. She leaned back and crossed her legs.

“So…Samuels sent you to me, I take it? You are Glen? Glen Robinson, right?”

“Yes,” Glen Robinson.” She smiled, nodded and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Oh. I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to the spirit I channel. The one who just gave me your name.” She picked up a cookie and took a bite. “Diedra is my guide.”

“Your guide,” I said. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Yes. My guide.” She leaned back. “I take it that you don’t believe in such things. You will soon.” She finished her cookie and leaned forward. She extended her hand. “Die,” she said. I arched my brows. My name is “Die,” she said. “I'm a vessel for Diedra. And you, Glen Robinson, are a believer, or experiencer. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s why you joined the Space Force? You thought that all the stories about the gods being Extraterrestrials were true, right?”

“Have you been talking with Dr. Samuels?”

“No. Not in two or three months.”

“How did you know I was coming then?”

“Didn’t I just tell you?”

“How do you know my history?”

“Didn’t I just tell you?”

“You mean you’re channeling someone? A goddess, in fact?”

“Of course. Didn’t I just tell you? Why don’t you listen to me?”

“It’s hard to believe.”

“Does that mean you don’t have to listen?” She leaned forward and picked up her coffee cup. She sat back.

“No. It doesn’t mean I don’t have to listen. It’s just that…”

“You can’t hear me,” she finished. “We’ll take care of that. By the time we are through with you, you’ll be able to hear everything.” I looked around the room. She sipped her coffee and grinned. “Look around. Go ahead. They are everywhere around us and you can’t see them. Not only the gods and spirits, but the occupants of this planet. They’re on a different vibration than us so you can’t see them, but they’re here.”

I was speechless. She grinned. She continued. “They have always been here. You just can’t see them or hear them. Did you really think you would find a planet this perfect with no one living on it?”

“I thought they may have all been dead, or had a war and wiped themselves out or something. I’m just a soldier.”

“No you’re not, or you wouldn’t be here. The doctor only sends special people here. Those who are uncomfortable because they are feeling all kinds of presences and don’t know how to explain it. That’s you.”

“It’s me?”

“Yes. Or are you trying to tell me that I’m not telling the truth?” It was my turn to pick up the coffee cup and to add some cream and sugar to buy some time. I stirred slowly. How’d this woman know all these things?

“Diedra told me,” She answered, as if she had read my mind.

“What else does Diedra have to say?”

“You’ll have to stick around to find that out.” She leaned back into the sofa again. “Well. You going to stick around or not?”

“How much will it cost me?”

“How much is it worth?” I grinned. “You’ll just owe me,” she finally said.

“Owe you? Owe you what?”

“Your soul.”

“What? Are you kidding?”

“I’m not.” She leaned forward and picked up another cookie before leaning back into the sofa. “You let me borrow your soul for the duration of your visits here. I’ll clean it up a little and take care of it, and then I’ll give it back to you whole and unblemished. I speak now as Diedra, of course.”

“Where’d you meet Samuels?” I asked.

“We’re discussing something a little more important right now, aren’t we? Give me your soul and I’ll give it back later. You have to trust me, or we can’t do this?”

“And just exactly what are we doing?”

“Trying to help you transcend the box that you find yourself in now. Do you want help or not?”

“Yes, but that is a little steep, wouldn’t you say?”

“Just a minute. Diedra has made an offer. She will give you her soul in place of yours. You will switch places for the next couple of months. How does that sound? Don’t tell me you don’t trust Diedra.”

“I don’t know Diedra.”

“She’s one of our gods.”

“What do you mean, our?”

“I’m indigenous to this planet, don’t you know that?”

“No. People said there was no life on this planet, no higher forms anyway.”

“That’s a coded language in your culture for no one exists who can protect themselves from us, or who behaves the way we understand as civilized. There are very few people on this planet on this plane of existence because we’ve kept it that way on purpose, but there are millions of us constantly cycling through this awareness. You didn’t know that, did you?”

“No, because it sounds outright ridiculous to me.”

“Of course it does. That’s why you’re afraid to pay for the spiritual growth and direction I’m offering you. Because it’s unreal and ridiculous…right?” I sat and thought for a moment.

“No,” I simply said. “It’s just scary to even agree to something like that. You could be the devil or something.”

“So you believe in the devil, but you can’t believe in parallel universes or dimensions?” She started laughing.

“I don’t really believe in the devil, but just in case. I mean you are a weird, strange woman living out here in nature and all of that. And you’re telling me about a history that I’ve never heard. I’ve lived here 5 years and they never told me about any native people.”

“They wanted to,” Die said. “Why do you think they sent you to me? This is them telling you about native people.”

“Well I have to really think about your proposition.”

“That’s fair. Have some more coffee.” I took a drink.

“So…religiously inclined are you? How is that working for you?”

“I’m not religiously inclined.”

“Well the devil and all of that is pretty religious to me.”

“You’re right, I guess. I just know there are things I don’t know about in the world and trading of souls or whatever seems a little scary.”

“A trade wouldn’t be necessary if you just said yes. You have a goddess going to trade souls with you. Do you know what that means?”

“I’ll like dresses and what not.”

“You just don’t understand. I don’t believe she’s offering this.”

“That makes two of us.” She was silent. We just sat there. She picked up her cup of coffee and began to drink it, looking over the edge every so often watching me.

“Yeah, or Neh?” She asked.

“Neh.” I replied.

“That means…yes. Your coffee is drugged. Your soul is mine to borrow.” I just shook my head, but then I felt woozie. “I’ll see you again in 90 days or so.” I discovered that it was hard for me to move even though I could see and hear everything. She stood up and cleared the table. I could only watch. She replaced the tray, the coffee, the cakes and cookies with a large white candle.

She took a leather pouch out from a drawer in the small table next to the loveseat. I could only watch and couldn’t say a word. She loosened the top and began to shake a small amount of red power from it onto the floor making a large circle around the coffee table, me, and the sofa I was sitting on. When she was finished she lit the candle, raised her hand over the table and began a strange chant in a language I had never heard. She reached under the table and removed a statue of a Goddess figure and placed it on the table. After almost 20 minutes of chanting she blew the candle out.

I looked around. I was somewhere else. It looked like the same room, but it was full of men and women dressed in bright colored clothing. A dark woman, the color of dark chocolate, walked up to me and looked me up and down. Everyone else paused and turned toward me.

“Ah. Another one,” a tall, distinguished looking gentleman said.

“Yes.” She responded. “ We get them one at a time. I guess he’s worthy even if he had to get thrown in.”

“They are rather closed minded,” a blond haired woman added. I didn’t know how to respond. I was in some kind of trance. The dark woman looked at me and lifted a corner of her mouth.

“I am Die. Welcome to your training. We’re going to introduce you to the world of reality and break those chains your culture seems to be bound up in and producing every day. You will be here 90 days and will learn to see and to be beyond the vale.

You’ll learn to live beyond the vale. I think they threw you in completely since you were so hard headed. I’ve never seen Diedra want somebody so bad.” She noticed the look of nervousness on my face. Her face softened as she became more sympathetic. She brought a hand to her chest. “I am Sakra, Die’s existence on the other side–on this side. Welcome.” I didn’t respond.

“No response. That’s a good sign.” She lifted her hand toward the left side of the room. I saw myself standing up and helping Die clean off the table and get things together. “That’s Diedra. She’ll be living out your life for the next 90 days or so. I hope she doesn’t do anything bad.”

“Would she?” I asked.

“Oh. You can talk, can you? She’s a major Goddess. Do you think she would do bad things?”

“I didn’t ask for this.”

“Well it must not be a bad thing then, if she did it. Do you know what I mean?” I just shook my head. “Come with me, or remain here as a ghost for the next 90 days,” she said more sternly than before. “Worse yet, you’ll be sucked into that statue if you stay here and have to just stand there for 90 days.”

A large tunnel of light opened to the right hand side of us and began to spread. Some of the other people in the house stepped back as Sakra and I walked forward. We paused and looked in. “This is our path to reality,” she said. I was astonished. “She took my hand and literally pulled me into the light. I began to see every life that I had ever had. It was as if I had died and went to heaven, except for the fact that I wasn’t sure if I was even dead.

“You’re not dead yet,” Sakra commented. “We’re just going back to the beginning of your birth. It's the beginning of everything that you and I call existence. Welcome to the real world.”

The End

Om Prakash Gilmore is a writer and life coach. Follow us or subscribe to us on Vocal Media. Better yet, leave the author a tip to contribute to his continued creativity.