What the Seer Saw E-Book

John Calu

• Herausgeber: BooxAi
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

What if our ancestors lost faith in us?  What would they do?
 “What the Seer Saw” is a work of literary fiction that explores our ability to honor our ancestors, fall in and out of love and do our best to serve a greater good.  The story is told against the backdrop of contemporary Tampa Bay’s arts, music and culinary scene. Nine diverse individuals are chosen to represent the whole of humanity in a search for understanding and a quest to put their core beliefs into action.
Chris Harding was a good cop, until he started having visions.
Dr. Amaya could handle the emergency room, but not someone else’s face in her mirror.
Charles Lakewood never really existed, so it was hard to make him disappear.
This is a tale of love and mysticism which questions the potential of humanity’s past, present and future.

Leseprobe

What the Seer Saw

John Calu

What the Seer Saw

All rights reserved

Copyright ©️ 2022 by John Calu

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Published by BooxAi

ISBN: 978-965-577-924-0

What the Seer Saw

John Calu

For Troy & Blanca

Thank you for Sharing Paradise

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the love, inspiration, encouragement and support of many wonderful people. My deepest appreciation goes out to Zully & Vanessa, Tom Calu & Vivian Baker, Troy & Blanca Klingner, Dave Hart, Kirk Jarvis, Marlena White, Randy Russell, Marcelo Gandaria, Eddie & Susan, Jack Warwick, Mike Zarrilli, George Miller, Rich & Mary Klupp, Bob & Jeanne Stives, John Swatkoski, Philip Spuler Sr. and Martin Ribeyro.

Cover Photo used by Permission

“National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution”

BAE GN 00893 William Terrill Bradby in Native Headdress

Contents

Prologue

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part II

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part III

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

About the Author

Prologue

Once upon a time, your ancestors walked this earth. They are the ones who sent us. Like yours, their time here was brief, but no one should ever underestimate the significance of an individual human life. Many have overcome the most impoverished circumstances to lead lives of dignity, grace and generosity. Although there is no hierarchy in the afterlife that you would recognize, those who walked in harmony with their humanity are offered a place among similar spirits who arrived before them. They form entities we call Ascendant Councils, and it is our honor to serve as their observers. If we have done our job right, you would hardly know that we were there.

The creator endowed your planet with four sacred elements: Air, Earth, Fire and Water. They were given in abundance and intended to remain in balance.We have watched you for thousands of years, learning to take advantage of the gifts you were given, but over the past few centuries your impact has far outpaced your intellect. The dangers your actions, or lack thereof, represent to yourselves and your planet are of great concern.

For the most part, our role has been one of benign neglect, but when we read that “Water Futures are now available on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange,” it was our responsibility to inform a Council of Ascendants. It was, as we expected, a breach too far. It was bad enough that a Celebrity President had abandoned the Paris Climate Accord, this was a dangerous turn of events that called for an immediate response.

The council’s response was crafted by a recent ascendant. Don Eligio Panti was known as the Ninth Lord of Time, arising from the Mayan Culture with an incredible breadth of knowledge related to flora, fauna and their medicinal application. He was rumored to have OCD and satirically referred to as “nueve veces” for his habit of repeating certain daily domestic rituals nine times, so it came as no surprise when he elected to support a nine point plan for addressing this attack on one of the primary elements. What did surprise us was how quickly the council adopted his resolution and the role we observers were asked to play in launching the quest they prescribed.

In brief, we were charged with identifying nine representatives of the earthborn races with sufficient ancestral significance, diversity, skill, intelligence, aptitude and attitude as to enable one or more of them to discover a pathway capable of preserving the sanctity of water for future generations. They would be tested by the ascendants for a period of time equal to that of a typical human gestation. Their success or failure would determine the fate of humankind.

Although the events used for final determination would not necessarily occur in a linear timeline, our initial report had been distributed on December 9th, 2020 and the next nine months would be far more challenging than any of us in heaven or on earth had anticipated. Faced with a life-threatening pandemic, in the midst of an economic and political upheaval like none we had ever witnessed before, we were nonetheless encouraged to find the best humankind had to offer and activate it by whatever means necessary.

We needed a diverse population with great mobility, which meant good weather was essential. Even though the nine descendant representatives would be tested and introduced to each other in dream states before ever meeting in person, we needed to ensure that their first “live” meetings had all the ingredients required to encourage and expedite interaction. We chose the greater Tampa Bay area as the ideal location. The largest city on the Gulf Coast of Florida offered people from all walks of life in an environment that enabled them much greater freedom of movement than any other location we considered.

We were given a target date to activate relations between our first trio in conjunction with the Winter Solstice. Conjunction is the appropriate word in this case since Jupiter and Saturn would be closer on the 21st of December than at any other time in the next eight hundred years. We weren’t sure if this would prove fortuitous or ruinous, since planetary alignments are known to have a wide variety of effects on the earthborn. Given the diverse nature of our subjects, anything could happen.

PartOne

ChapterOne

Christopher Harding was an all-american cop. Just twenty-four years old, he was an impressive specimen by any standard. Six foot tall and full of muscle, the former high school quarterback had graduated first in his class at the academy and truly believed it was his calling in life to serve and protect the good citizens of St. Pete’s Beach. He was not insensitive to the dangers of his profession, but he was intolerant of anything that would tarnish his department’s reputation. He served dinner at a non-profit soup kitchen every Wednesday night without ever being asked to and attended every community event there ever was, often showing up on a bicycle he had resuscitated from a junkyard and would later donate to a teen in need. During his time off, he surfed, stayed in shape and enjoyed the hell out of an occasional burger and beer. Jimmy B’s in the Beachcomber was his favorite place to hang out, providing a healthy mix of tourists and locals. He was attracted to the former and careful with the latter, but he had been having very strange dreams lately involving a Black Lives Matter activist and a famous surfer girl. One of them sat down beside him at the bar and ordered a “beyond” burger.

“Are they any good?” He asked nonchalantly, finishing the last bite of his non-plant based version.

“Actually, they taste like the real thing,” Sarah Douglass responded with a friendly smile. Normally, she would have been put off by some white dude assuming he had the right to converse without any introduction, but there was something gentle and honest about this ridiculously handsome guy that disarmed her, so she introduced herself.

“I’m Sarah, by the way,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.

“Nice to meet you, Sarah, I’m Chris,” he said, offering his hand before pulling it back quickly. “Sometimes, I forget myself. Go figure, love in the time of Covid,” he laughed, motioning to a bottle of hand sanitizer sitting on the bar between them.

Sarah grabbed the bottle, squeezed a few drops in her hand and started rubbing them together. Next she squeezed a couple drops in his hand, and after he had finished rubbing them, they extended hands and shook, formally and comically, in a meet-cute moment. What neither of them had been prepared for were the shock waves that went through their bodies when their fingers touched.

Sarah had just left a symposium on diversity in corporate hiring practices at the TradeWinds Resort not far away. She was a career counselor at a community college in Tampa, but her exceptional public speaking skills had made her a local favorite for media and professional organizations seeking representation on Black Lives Matter issues. She felt a little overdressed for Jimmy B’s but didn’t mind the way Chris gazed at her from top to bottom. When she excused herself to visit the restroom, she imagined him watching her walk away. She knew she looked good. She wasn’t going to stay much longer, but she would definitely get his number.

Less than five minutes away, our third descendant representative was cursing the gears in her beat up Volvo for giving up on her just before the odometer hit half a million miles. She was not a patient person. She spoke with triple A and told them the car was parked on the side of the road across from The Beachcomber on St. Pete’s Beach. She gave them her cell phone number and decided she was in the mood for a shot of something tasty, Jagermeister came to mind.

“So who do you have to fuck, to get a drink around here?”

Chris was about to lecture her for inappropriate language when he recognized the other girl of his dreams.

“Aren’t you Cory Eberhard?”

“Who wants to know?” She smiled at him playfully, taking him in completely and fearlessly, the way she took on everything in life.

“My name is Chris. I saw you surf on Sunset Beach last spring. You pulled off some amazing hang time.”

“Caught a lucky southwest break. There were only two of them the whole damned day, but thanks for noticing.”

The bartender showed up and she ordered two shots of Jagermeister, slowly walking the extra one over to Chris and toasting him.

“Cheers to my biggest fan.” She downed the shot and licked her lips, enjoying the fact that it made him blush a little.

Sarah’s pulse quickened as she watched a hot, young blonde muscle in on her charming new companion, but she wasn’t sitting this one out for anybody. She took a seat beside him and stage-whispered, “I can’t leave you alone for a minute,” while staring straight into the surfer girl’s beautiful green eyes. The two formidable women were dumbstruck, unwilling or unable to end each other’s gaze, and Chris fumbled for a way to introduce two people who had just crossed the threshold from his dreams into his waking life. How could he feel so close to them, when he hardly knew them at all? Had either of them dreamed about him? From the way they had just stared right past him, they could just as easily have dreamed about each other. This was definitely not in his training materials, but he was more than willing to go off the reservation, given half a chance.

Our apologies, “going off the reservation” may have been an insensitive way to describe Chris’s current inclinations, given the fact that he was descended from one WilliamTerrill Bradby, Indian scout, river guide and Pamunkey Shaman known as The Seer. Their connection had been tenuous up until now, but Chris was about to get a first hand lesson in how his ancestor earned his reputation.

He thought maybe Surfer Girl had slipped something in his drink. He couldn’t remember her name and only saw her from a distance. Sarah on the other hand was standing right in front of him dressed in a black silk robe with a gavel in her hand, pounding on a lectern while she repeated a phrase that took him deeper and deeper into an ocean of emotion he could no longer control. Yah tah hey, oh hai, ya tah hey… the drums were steady and yet off beat, he could feel them rather than hear them rolling in his solar plexus. Yah tah hey, oh hai, yah tah hey… He followed the trail of Sarah’s tears down her cheeks until he saw that her legs and feet were bare with chains around her ankles. Next, he flashed on Cory whose name he just remembered and she looked like a teenage fairy surfing on a board covered in spikes. Blood trickled down her leg into the water like a neon red tide, while sharks surfaced, attracted to her scent. In the blink of an eye, he was solo in a desert, nearly dying of thirst, a single beacon in the distance, guiding him to a personal oasis where both women, now sisterly in every aspect, save how they looked at him, sat comfortably eating dates like New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day and March 9th.

The trio had moved to a comfy couch by a fire pit, closer to the beach and Cory was chowing down on wings while Sarah dipped her chips in guacamole. The two of them debated how cold the water was this time of year and laughed at what a lightweight Chris had turned out to be. He felt like he was coming back to them from a great distance, but had barely nodded off for a minute at the most. His first vision had given him insights into Sarah’s future and Cory’s past but left him none the wiser in the present. He ordered a cup of coffee to try and get his wits back and stared out deep into the night sky wondering where he had been.

“That’s the problem with your people,” Cory thrust an accusing finger at Sarah and added “you don’t stand up for yourselves until some hip white people tell you it’s okay. You should have burned the house down a long time ago.”

“Wow,” Sarah laughed out loud in wonder. “If anybody else ever said that to me, I’d read them the riot act, but you really believe it, don’t you?”

“Malcom X was right, honey! Nobody’s ever gonna listen to some guy taking a knee. You gotta bomb the shit out of your enemies and drink their blood out of their own fucking skulls to show them you mean business.”

“But violence only brings more violence, Cory,” Sarah tried to reason with her newfound defender. “And you end up creating more enemies than you had before. The ancient Greeks knew that democracy was messy, but we haven’t found a better system yet and until we do, I’d put my money on checks and balances. You’ll see, the pendulum is heading back in the right direction now.”

“I hope you’re right and I’ll drink to that.” Cory downed another shot. “But I’m gonna stay ready for battle in case you need me. I’m not going to let those fat, old, rich, white mother- fuckers keep getting away with murder anymore.”

Chris sat silent in between two worlds. He was listening to a radical white surfer chick spouting leftist rhetoric while a black feminist opted for peace in the valley with an eye towards that shining city on a not too distant hill. His practical skills had taught him that movement and posture were more important than a suspect’s words, but his newfound intuition showed him where the words were coming from.

It had taken Sarah and Cory less than an hour to form a bond of sisterhood, despite both sharing an attraction to Chris. Apparently earthborn women needed each other more than they needed men at this particular moment in time. As a species, with very few exceptions, they had not yet arrived at an understanding of how to engage in intersexual experiences without resultant jealousies and (or) win/lose re-inforced perspectives. That could take several more generations to become mainstream unless of course they resort to eliminating all sexual relations in favor of options created by artificial intelligence. The universal jury is still out on which of these paths leads to greater advances in evolution among beings with a primal urge intact.

“I think I’m going to get a room for the night. Either of you two want to join me?” Cory felt no need for subtlety or subterfuge. She was always who she was and made no apologies for what she wanted. Chris was the first to hesitate, and more out of chivalry than any lack of interest, he mentioned having to work early and Cory let him off the hook easily.

“No big deal. It was nice to meet you. We’ll catch up some other time. Maybe we could hit the surf together?” They exchanged cell phone numbers and she explained that she was moving in with an old friend in Dunedin, having left a bad relationship behind in Venice Beach. Chris detected a note of sadness in her otherwise aggressive armor and almost changed his mind to stay with her, but just as quickly realized she needed a friend more than another lover, tonight. As for himself, after the visions he had just experienced, he needed time alone. Sarah surprised both of them.

“You know what? I think I’ll take you up on that. I’m too tired to drive home tonight. Let’s grab a nightcap, on me. I’ll drop you off wherever they tow your car and stop home for a change of clothes in the morning.” She pulled Chris aside for a parting conversation while Cory went to get a room.

“It was really nice to meet you, Chris, and from now on, I can promise you Blue Lives Matter more than they ever did, so be careful out there.” She gave him a tender kiss on the cheek and they both felt another shockwave similar to what they had experienced the first time their fingers had touched. They also exchanged numbers and promised to meet again with or without their potential partner in crime.

Our first trio had been successfully activated. It was time to set another triad in motion.

ChapterTwo

The emergency room at Tampa General wasn’t a very good place for a meet-cute experience and Christmas Eve was a lousy time of year to get stabbed. The staff was up to their masks in viral invaders and Manny K was lucky to have a friend like Darpan interceding on his behalf. He pleaded with the attendant for attention to his friend’s bleeding appendage.

“My friend was involved in a crime of passion, stabbed most viciously above his right knee. I cleaned and wrapped the wound in strips of cloth, but I’m afraid my ministrations were insufficient. Please help him. He is in a great deal of pain.”

Darpan Arduan looked exactly as he spoke. He was a handsome, mild mannered east indian with an almost beatific nature. Dark and slender, he appeared slightly frail, but was nothing of the sort. In fact, he had carried his husky Mexican friend in his arms for several city blocks from the gallery where the events of the evening had unfolded.

Manny K was short for Ketzahl which he signed at the bottom right of his canvases and murals with the letter K formed of butterfly wings. He was a prolific up and coming artist creating abstract, surreal and impressionist works while developing a taste for other men’s wives; especially those who purchased his paintings. Barrel chested, broad shouldered and ruggedly appealing, he was used to dealing with life on his own terms. He had left Durango for Mexico City at a very young age and made a name for himself in a society that appreciated bold and colorful arts and artists. His overzealous pursuit of a libertine lifestyle had driven him from his homeland and landed him in New Orleans. There he met a most unlikely companion in Darpan who had immersed himself in the most decadent place he could think of in order to overcome his own connection to desire itself. The two of them became inseparable and after a few years of enabling Manny to indulge in all the pleasures of the flesh he could want, by faithfully representing and profitably selling his works, Darpan convinced him they could have a more peaceful life along the Gulf Coast of Florida. Unfortunately, for Darpan, peace was not in Manny’s nature.

Dr. Amaya was in the thirteenth hour of what would turn out to be an eighteen hour shift. She felt an unusual sense of calm when Darpan greeted her with his hands together in prayer as if to say, Namaste, bowing his head ever so gently. He had such a deep, penetrating and yet kind gaze, that she felt a desire in his presence which was almost entirely foreign to her. She had been raised in a very strict Chinese American household where all desires were channeled into study. Her full name was Amaya Lian Wong, but the cruelty of xenophobia in her adopted homeland’s culture convinced her to forgo the beauty of her moniker in favor of something more palatable to the average American.

Manny summoned the strength to flirt with her as if it were his duty, while she cut off his pant leg to reveal a series of clean, neatly layered strips of white poplin material which had once formed the back panel of Darpan’s finest dress shirt. The pattern he had woven had indeed stanched the flow of blood and bound the wound in such a way as to begin the healing process. Even though Dr. Amaya removed the cloth strips with great care, Manny was anything but stoic in his response, as if by howling at the injury he could somehow distance himself from the fact that he had inspired it in the first place, caught in flagrante delicto with the mistress of a married wealthy patron of the arts who had just bought one of his paintings. Manny actually considered himself tactful for not fucking the man’s wife instead, although the headline in the art section of tomorrow’s news column would take care of that as well. The Tampa Bay arts scene would delight in the revelation that Charles and Mimi Bardmoor were not immune to scandal.

Dr. Amaya cleaned and stitched the wound expertly, all the while implying that her own dressing would be no match for Darpan’s skillful emergency care. Darpan smiled, reassured that his friend was in good hands. Manny became annoyed that the doctor was paying so much attention to his agent, when he was obviously the injured party. Completely out of character for her, the good doctor offered her business card to Darpan, suggesting more than an interest in the wounded artist’s welfare. Normally oblivious to other people’s feelings, Manny caught a strange glimpse of how Darpan’s eyes sparkled with just a hint of something buried and long forgotten when he accepted the offered connection. Amaya Lian Wong had written her full name and private cell number on the back of the card.

The next morning, Darpan read the reviews of the gallery opening and knew this would be a dark day for Manny K. News of the scandal wouldn’t faze him in the least and in fact, it would raise the price of his paintings as well as the number of invitations to display his works. But there in print for the intelligentsia who had never fully embraced the temperamental Mayan was an indictment of his talent, stripped bare of his celebrity, from the former curator of the Dali Museum.

“Manny K was on full display last night at The Cass Contemporary and one had to admire his showmanship if not his skill with a brush. He is always accompanied by fiery aficionados and the drama that surrounds his sexual escapades does occasionally find a presence in his actual works. Unfortunately, his recent canvasses offer little more than sublimation and are very poor substitutes for any actual passion. He paints in the style of a would be Catalan, but without so much blood as a contemporary can of soup. His mostly feminine central figures do come alive, even if they are a bit like libidinous super heroes, but his backgrounds are lifeless at best and atrociously inept at times. Apparently the mercurial youth has aged without any attendant grace. His landscapes have no soul, no depth and certainly no breath. He mimics the patterns of great impressionists with a pale pallet. He shows no deference to their interplay of light and shadow and then sets them insultingly in service of characters unworthy of a foreground position. His position is one of fading glory unless he can rekindle a promise he has never quite fulfilled.”

Darpan met Manny at a hole in the wall Mexican cafe on 49th street in downtown St. Petersburg for breakfast, as was their custom after a gallery opening. He had already ordered for both of them, when Manny limped in using a fashionable cane that appeared in his studio that morning, out of nowhere, left no doubt by an amorous admirer.

The artist read his reviews with a cafe con leche, three eggs scrambled with onions and tomatoes, chorizo, fried potatoes and plain white toast. He laughed out loud on the outside, but Darpan knew it was crushing him on the inside. Darpan sipped hot water with lemon and took a bite of his dry whole wheat toast, trying to gauge the extent of the psychic damage Manny was suffering. As if it was beneath him, Manny let out an exasperated sigh, wiped the corners of his mouth and forged ahead.

“So, what’s next on our agenda to dominate the art world? And more importantly, what did you think of that doctor last night? There was something quite exotic about her. I haven’t had an Asian lover in many years. Let’s invite her wherever we go next.”

Darpan felt oddly wounded. Nearly devoid of physical desires, he was nonetheless drawn to Dr. Amaya and flattered that she had written her full name and number on the back of her business card. He knew that Manny could not help himself. It was in his nature to crave every attractive female that crossed his path, but somehow this felt like an attack, a wound that Manny wanted to inflict on his closest confidante for daring to enjoy someone else’s attention when the artist himself was so clearly in need after the reviews he had just endured. Darpan deflected the insensitive remarks, as he often did, and listed the upcoming events focusing on an exhibition of Manny’s works for charity which was going to be part of a New Year’s Eve Celebration at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. Since this was happening in the middle of a pandemic, there was a very limited guest list and precautions that would make it difficult for Manny to get into too much trouble. At least that was what Darpan hoped against all odds.