NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 191

The fire is in full swing. He extends his palms over it to lower the flame then he leans in and inhales the smoke, looking at me with interest as if he expects I'll join in.

"What I want to tell you calls for a calmer state of mind. Go ahead," he coaxes me. "Inhale it."

"What? I've never smoked anything in my life, and I'm not about to start now."

"I'm not asking you to build a plane."

"Ask me then. I'd rather do that than this."

"All you have to do is lean in and inhale, and then exhale; like this."

"No." I shake my head from side to side. "Not doing it."

"Well, I hate to break it to you. But you've already done it."

"I just told you, I never did."

"The future you did it."

"And the present me is saying no, you drug addict."

"Me? A drug addict? I'm not the one who downed all those pills."

"Oh, come on. Is everybody going to use that against me? Okay, I took some pills. So what?"

"Lean in and you'll see what comes next. That's what."

I reluctantly bend over and follow his lead. Inhale. Exhale. I want to breathe again. Inhale. Exhale. I want to dream again. Inhale. Exhale. I want to live again. The third round makes words and pictures appear in the sky, and flip the album of time. I see a prophecy written about a girl named Mary Pethiel then as the pages turn they all come true to the letter. Now I see myself suspended in the air, leaping up with thirty-three keys in hand. And then; I think I see one of Hazel's angels approaching. But the throne master snaps his fingers.

"That's enough! I don't want you travelling too far and going crazy on us."

"What did I just see?"

"You saw what your kind calls the future. You saw what already happened."

"So you're saying there's no future?"

"Nice. You're catching on faster than expected."

"That must mean there's no past either," I say mockingly. "Well, I don't believe you."

"Why's that so hard to believe?"

"Because everyone knows we have a linear existence; past, present and future."

"Tell me. How many Marys do you see when you look in the mirror?"

"I see two, actually."

"And how many do you see now?" He sends the mirror back to an early grave.

I look down at one of the pieces and am about to say one. But a closer look changes my mind.

"I see many Marys."

Then he performs a resurrection and the mirror is whole again. "And now?"

"Just one Mary."

"You see, Mary. What appears to be many is really one. Stop peering into broken mirrors."

Then he walks back over to his throne and sits, flanked by his four soldiers. I decide that I want to know what he does and prostrate myself before him.

"Get up," he whispers a command. "Come closer."

When I get there, he clasps my head with both hands and presses his forehead into mine. Then he transfers his ability to see here, there and everywhere, and everything becomes splinters. I see the making and destruction of the throne even as he sits upon it. But there's something else too, that simply cannot be real. A blue Caribbean sea, I am seeing for the first time, yet know every inch of its beauty; and its string of islands, lie between two mirrors, allowing for a double reflection. On the left is the Karmic Islands I am used to. But on its right; no, it just cannot be. Is that what is really coming? Before my thoughts have a chance to respond, a tsunami washes my vision away, and I'm back in the throne room alone, thinking, run, Mary; run.