NOT VAHALLA

 

Choosing to risk his own life rather than order one of his Spartans to almost certainly lose their hands, if not their own life,

Richard Blaine fires a prototype Laser Cannon from the future to save his men and the wounded soldiers from Operation Tiger.

As the ghost of Mark Twain could have told him: no good deed goes unpunished. Blaine collapses from the pain.

NOT VAHALLA

“No one is so brave that he isnot disturbed by something unexpected.”

– Julius Caesar

 

That I woke up not dead was thefirst surprise.

The second surprise followedclose on the heels of the first: I was blind.

A heartbeat stab of cold panic. Then,I felt the heavy, strange fabric covering my eyes.

I heaved a sigh of relief. If myeyes were covered, it hinted that there was a chance I would be able to seeagain.

My eyes were covered for a reason.

I reflected on the purity of all humanmotivations, and the panic was back.

Eyesight is not just about seeing.

It's about truly experiencing theworld around us.

Our eyesight is a gift thatallows us to see the beauty and wonder of life, to navigate around the bumpsand potholes of life.

To have good eyesight is to havea window into the soul of the world, into the souls of those around us revealedin their eyes.

The truth of eyes lies not onlyin their color and shape, but also in the stories they tell or don’t tell.

Without my sight, I was naked againstthe night, against those who dwelled in the night of the soul whether it wasday or dark.

That thought led to the third surprise:I was naked.

It’s said clothes make the man. Isuppose so. As Mark Twain wrote: Naked men have little to no influence on society.

In a strange way clothes are onus to expose us -- to advertise why we wear them to conceal. Take a raven tyingpeacock feathers to his wings.

That would tell you much aboutthat particular raven.

We put clothes on to propagate thelies of our lives and back them up.

The lack of clothes led me to thefourth surprise: I was floating.

Like Dorothy before me, I realizedI was no longer in Kansas. In the America of the 1940’s, floating patients wasreserved for Magic Acts.

Cold air currents flowed over memaking my body one big goose bump.

Cold?

Well, that ruled out Hell …unless I was on the lowest level. But then, what had Dante known?

And the smell of those aircurrents was all off. It smelled stale but neutral. No stench of burnt fleshfrom my charred palms.

 I was getting creeped out by all thesesurprises.

Nothing is more memorable than asmell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up achildhood summer beside a lake in the mountains.

Sometimes life takes you onunexpected paths. But this was ridiculous. I understood that those paths aren'talways in the same direction.

Still, I hate it when lifedecides to tug me in opposing directions to see if it can break me.

The fifth surprise was that Icouldn’t feet my hands, but my wrists hurt like hell.

Was I in Hell?

If so, then the custodians hadtaken my clothes. Out of meanness, out of a lousy sense of humor?

Enough was enough.

Apparently, not. My nose startedto itch. I tried to scratch it with my right throbbing wrist.

I couldn’t move.

Now, I was beginning to panic.

At St. Marok’s I had seen newarrivals at the orphanage panic. It always ended badly for them.

Panic implies that there is norational solution to the pressing problem.

But with a working mind … and mymind was one of the few things I had that was still working … you could alwaysfind some remedy to the situation.

Not a perfect remedy, mind you, butthen this is an imperfect world.

You worked with what you had.

I had a mind, so I would usethat.

A single event can awaken withinus a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. I certainlyfelt as ignorant and helpless as a new-born.

So, what did a new-born baby dowhen it was scared?

It cried.

‘All right, Sentient. Where am I?Where are you?’

No answer. Long, long minutes ofno answer.

All right. Maybe now was the timeto panic.

A little.