Awakening—Event Horizon: Avatar Trilogy, #3

By Stan I.S. Law

The next gigantic step in Human Evolution.

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away..."

Revelation 21:1

 

Anne Howell and her group of friends experience the most cataclysmic events in human history. They are among the few that survive. Join them in a most incredible experience that changed their reality. They learn the secret of the Event Horizon, where the centripetal and centrifugal forces remain in perfect balance.

 

"Amazing story! Superb in presentation, concept and solid science to support all that was revealed in the potential presented to readers! ~ Wonderful!" GABixlerReviews

 

In the AVATAR SYNDROME and HEADLESS WORLD, Anne pushed the envelope of her talents to utter limits. In AWAKENING, she discovers the straight and narrow path that links our reality with the enormity of the Universes dormant within us. Some say she discovered the gateway to Heaven. Don't miss it.

 

"…With the progression of the trilogy we better understand Stan's worldview – which is another way of saying that he has successfully beckoned us into his mysterious, mesmerizing world. That is a sign of a brilliant author, and Stan I.S. Law stands tall in that position."

 Grady Harp, Hall of Fame top 100 Reviewer.

 

A few blurbs from 5-STAR reviews:

Epic!

Amazing story!

A fast-paced epic!

A mind-blowing novel!

Five well-deserved stars!

The next Gigantic Step in Human Evolution.

The Event Horizon - The Promise We Were Given?

"No, there is no hell. There is only a cleansing process…"

 

Anne reawakens fantastic powers within herself. Then others discover them, too. Be there at the beginning.

Perhaps they are dormant within you... too?

• Language: English
• Publisher: INHOUSEPRESS
• Release date: Dec 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781987864526

Book preview

Some thoughts from just three readers...

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Reading Stan I.S. Law is an invitation to absorb not only a sensuous love story but to also expand your mind into fields that perhaps are a bit foreign until Law makes them so explicable. This is a wondrous work - wise, witty, enthralling. With the progression of the trilogy we better understand Stan’s worldview—which is another way of saying that he has successfully beckoned us into his mysterious, mesmerizing world. That is a sign of a brilliant author, and Stan I.S. Law stands tall in that position.

Grady Harp

HALL OF FAME—TOP 100 REVIEWER —VINE VOICE

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Amazing story! Superb in presentation, concept and solid science to support all that was revealed in the potential presented to readers! Thanks Stan! I appreciate so much your creation and sharing with your readers the potential of the Event Horizon! Anne just might become my fictional role model because of you! Wonderful!

Glenda GABixler

Reviews

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Awakening is book three of Stan I.S. Law’s Avatar Trilogy. It is not essential to have read book one and two first, but I do recommend it. For a start, book one and two represent brilliant literature, and secondly, having read book one and two first makes reading book three easier and better understandable, especially from a philosophical-spiritual perspective.

Johann David Renner

Author

AVATAR TRILOGY

BOOK THREE

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AWAKENING

EVENT HORIZON

A Novel by

Stan I.S. Law

BY INHOUSEPRESS, MONTREAL, CANADA

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Copyright © Stanislaw Kapuscinski eBook 2016

2nd Edition 2020

ISBN 978-1-987864-52-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, titles, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

FOREWORD

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Book One of the Avatar Trilogy, the "Avatar Syndrome" follows Anne Howell from childhood to womanhood; from a troubled, taciturn youth, to a world-renowned violinist; from misunderstood recluse, to messiah of a higher truth and beauty. Towards the end of the book Anne discovers, quite unwittingly, healing powers churning within her, which seem to radiate towards people calling for help at a subliminal level.

This is a subtle and intriguing mix of psychology, love, fame, faith and futurism. It feels like a rolling, slowly churning sea, where pieces come together and fall apart only to meet other pieces. On a deeper level, it is an exploration of the human potential that springboards forward from science and technology to a paradoxical return to ancient mysticism.

...wrote Bryn Symonds

These sentiments are manifest throughout the Trilogy.

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Book Two, the "Headless World", pits the traditions and beauty of the Vatican against the cold mechanical might of the American War Machine. The whole world is the playing field.

Anne, her husband, Dr. Peter Brown; Sir Ian Barton, the affable maestro; Gabriel, the mystical butler; and their new friend Gio, the powerful Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church who later becomes the Pope Ioannes-Anna, join forces as they unravel the most sinister bid for power the world has ever seen.

As the story unfolds, Anne’s healing powers multiply, and grow to unprecedented heights, yet nothing could prepare her, nor her friends, for what would happen next. The world would never be the same again. Never.

Characters you may have met in the:

AVATAR SYNDROME

and

HEADLESS WORLD

Books I and II of the Trilogy

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...and a few years later...

Anne Howell Brown

Dr. Peter Brown, M.D., F.R.C.S., M.S., D.O..

Michael Howell, Anne’s father 

Dianne Howell, Anne’s mother

Eric Grady Ph.D., Astrophysicist

Deirdre Grady, Anne & Peter’s daughter

Johnny (Giovanni) Brown, Anne & Peter’s son

Gabriel, Grady’s son

Gabriel—Majordomo

Gio, Pope Ioannes-Anna

Cardinal Francisco, Gio’s Camerlengo

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

PART ONE - SUMMER

1. Rome

2. Promised Land

3. The Sleeping Prophet

4. Frustrations

5. Anne

6. Tsunami

PART TWO - THE RAINY SEASON

7.   The Flowers

8.   Autumn of our Discontent

9.   Ottawa 

10. Nothing to Worry About

11. Anarchy

12. Gabriel

PART THREE - ICE AGE 

13. The White Veil

14. Visits and Visitations

15. Vibrations

16. The Last Try

17. Prophecies

18. Mars, Venus, and Retirement Home

PART FOUR - PRIMAVERA

19. Ice Age

20. Awakening

21. Many are Called

22. New Heaven and New Earth

23. Image and Likeness

24. Event Horizon

EPILOGUE

Dedicated to my wife,

my brother,

my friends,

and to all people who search

PROLOGUE

When you accept the truth, the fact that all is energy,

the energy can flow from one form to another,

depending on its rate of vibration, all things in

the phenomenal universe become possible.

The truth will set you free

You will do what others regard as miracles, whereas all you do is manipulate the rates of vibrations and, occasionally,

control them by thinking of them as specifics.

This knowledge was posited by 

Socrates

and confirmed by

Albert Einstein

PART ONE

Summer

1

Rome

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The steady, monotonous drone of the twinjet cruiser increased to a louder hum. The chimerical images of Peter’s dream swirled, and then dissolved into the ethers. He opened one eye.

Change in rate of vibrations, he mused.

It was his specialty. Everything to do with sound, or vibrations, has long become part of the way he looked at the world. For the last fifteen years Dr. Peter Brown was the Director of the Department of Experimental Sonic Neurosurgery, or simply DESN, at McGill University in Montreal. With a relatively short break in Washington and even shorter in Vatican, Montreal was his hometown. He gazed sideways at Anne, still curled up on her First Class seat.

It’s good to be tiny, he thought. He, with his six-foot two, 210 lbs frame, could only just be comfortable in his seat. Anyway, he hated flying. Inhaling other people’s stale breath and exuberant flatulence for seven plus hours was not his idea of luxury, although, contrary to almost everything else, the greedy airlines didn’t, as yet, charge for breathing. When he used to fly around with Anne, the airline CEO’s salaries exceeded $10 million. Now they must be in the twenties.

If only they wouldn’t insist on feeding us non-stop, he sighed. He was thinking of the gourmet meal they’ve been served a while ago. As a physician, he found it almost disgusting. How can people hope to remain healthy?

Peter was already slightly overweight, though less so than most other passengers in the first class of the Air Canada Boeing, or was it Airbus, or some other flying monster defying gravity. Although the luxury of First Class seems to have increased at the expense of ordinary mortals in the tourist section, he still wasn’t comfortable.

It’s a wonder the planes can still takeoff... he muttered, and caught his breath seeing that Anne still looked asleep. He realized, belatedly, that the food would weigh as much inside as it did outside the human stomachs.

It’s still disgusting, he muttered, this time to himself, also becoming aware that at sixty, he was rapidly becoming a grumpy old man.

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Anne and Peter were flying to Rome to attend their son’s, Johnny’s, Premiere of his eleventh Grand Opera, The Promised Land. Peter chuckled. He didn’t recall ever taking his son to hear Sunday sermons, yet all Johnny’s operas derived their themes from the Bible. Perhaps there was a difference between faith and religion. Peter certainly believed in the intangible benevolence of the Universe, he just refused to put a human face on it. Even then, Johnny’s interpretation of the scriptures would make the fundamentalists’ toes curl.

Peter had read the libretto and heard most of the arias, and particularly the choral works, of the new opera. It promises to be an eye-opener, Peter murmured again, as he gazed down at the vague outline, still far below, of Via Conciliazione stretching from the Tiber all the way to St. Peter’s Square. It was only just visible through the gaps in almost continuous layers of clouds. No one heard him. Anne was still asleep. After years of lonesome experimental work in his laboratory, he’d gotten into the habit of murmuring to himself, as if seeking confirmation for his thoughts.

He leaned closer to the porthole.

The street of Great Reconciliation, he mused. If only the USA, and China, and Russia, and Iran, and... if all of them could reconcile their differences. They said that the Doomsday Clock moved to within five minutes of Imminent Destruction.

The trip to Rome was Johnny’s present for their 30th wedding anniversary. He closed his eyes. Another wet, no doubt dripping cloud obscured Via Conciliazione. It’s been wet since they left Montreal.

God, how time flies...

Peter pictured little Johnny in shorts, playing ball with his sister. Little Deidre, ever cute, ever dancing... Ah, yes, time does fly, much faster than this plane...

Actually God had nothing to do with time. He seems to have remained divinely indifferent in His timeless omnipresence, let alone omniscience. The least He might have done would be to stop this bloody, ah... I mean, blessed rain. It hasn’t stopped since last week. It seldom happens that it rains in Montreal, in Rome, and everywhere in between at the same time. These were trying times. Floods were reported all over the world.

It’s summer for crying out loud! he almost barked. ...or supposed to be!

It will stop any minute now, he heard Anne peeking through the porthole over his shoulder.

Your wish is weather’s command? he knew Anne could do it, probably, but he wished she didn’t show off. He also knew that she was adept at reading his thoughts.

It wasn’t my command, it was yours, she replied.

I said, I mean I thought, the least He... Peter threw his hands up in the air. Go figure... he gave up.

In Anne’s reality God, people, probably all animals and a few million trees, plants and all the attendant bugs, met somewhere where they merged into a strange, amorphous Singularity. She was not a pantheist in the true sense of the word, but she refused to name any place or thing that was outside His omnipresence. In her view we were all expression of the divine, often not very good ones.

A bump, another, then just slight vibration.

The wheels touched down. Soon they would be welcomed by their son. Hopefully. Johnny was very busy these days. Rehearsals went on virtually on 24/7 basis. While most artists had to be present only at specific hours, he was nailed to the boards most of the time.

They got up.

Remind me not to be a composer in my next life, Peter muttered under his breath.

And then he stopped dead. As the engines stopped people snapped up the window covers up and dying rays of the setting sun flooded the cabin. There wasn’t a drop of rain in sight. Except on the tarmac, of course. It was practically flooded. As he looked up he saw dark clouds disappearing over the eastern horizon. It all happened within no more than ten minutes.

He looked at Anne.

She contrived to look even more innocent than normally, but couldn’t hide a surreptitious smile. Her expression was saying, I had nothing to do with it!

And then they both saw the tall figure waving from afar. Johnny was a minor celebrity. He was allowed the freedom of the airport and probably most other places in Rome. Italians love opera, hence, they loved Johnny.

Under Johnny’s aegis, they cleared the customs within minutes. An elegant limousine was waiting for them in the no parking lane, with two carabinieri keeping a watchful eye on it. They both straightened to attention as Johnny approached. He left his parents for a moment to speak to the policemen. The next moment they were saluting and bowing and practically kissing Johnny’s hands.

What happened, Peter asked.

It was nothing, Johnny dismissed the question. Then, under his father’s stern gaze he added, I gave both of them two tickets to the Premiere.

Two...

They were just for the gallery, the top floor... Johnny added, sounding as though he needed an excuse.

Teatro dell'Opera di Roma gallery was always filled to the brim. Anne remembered. She played Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn there. More than once. For a moment she thought she heard the last movement of Mendelssohn’s... a young girl, a pixy, dancing onto the stage. Exactly like her daughter. Exactly like little Di...

Then the magic was gone. So many years have passed. Another life?

The limo took them directly to the Sir Ian’s villa. Johnny owned it now, but in his mind and heart, it still belonged to the great conductor and friend. The rain stopped but there was abundant evidence of nature’s watery profusion all over the place. As they drove, limo’s wheels splashed large pools of water in showery fountains on both sides. Luckily there were few people on the streets.

Good trip? Johnny asked.

I slept all the way, darling, Anne was fresh as a daisy in spring.

Last week your mother slept through four hours of thunder and lightening which made Lachine Canal break it’s banks, Peter put in.

It’s just as well we moved up in the world, Johnny smiled.

While the children, Johnny and Deirdre, were small, they all lived in Floralie de la Motagne, a residential development close to the Lachine Canal. Peter had rented a small condo to be close to Anne’s parents, a useful babysitting exigency. Then they moved to an apartment closer to Peter’s work, and finally to Westmount, where they enjoyed the privileges of upper class environs. Higher up, better views, more trees, and the resultant lesser pollution.

And no flooding...

The limo came to a gentle stop. It was quite dark already. From the heights of Via Di Porta Pinciana, the filigree of lights spread below them. The sparks were multiplied by reflections in omnipresent puddles that acted like reflecting pools. Also, the heavy traffic was making use of the first dry spell in nearly a week. It was a veritable beehive of ever-twinkling lights.

And then the door of the villa opened and a short dark figure was outlined against the lights in the hall.

Gio! Anne uttered in a loud whisper, and darted for the main door.

The figure no longer dark, though still clad in a black cassock, opened his arms. She fell into them in complete abandon. Gio, she said again, this time in a whisper chocking her throat.

The Pontiff didn’t say a word, but he held her close to his meager chest.

Welcome to Roma, he said at last. Then he started laughing. I just love the way you break all the protocols! he said, his voice filled with pleasure.

I’m sorry, Your Holiness, Anne pulled back from the fraternal embrace.

I am not, he replied. No, Anne, I’ll never be sorry to hold you in my arms.

The two of them shared the taxing events of what later became known as the Vatican Incident. It has been said that the two of them saved the whole world from a fate worse than death.

Peter and Johnny waited their turn to be greeted by the Holy Father. The Pope didn’t stand on ceremony. Both men got a hug from the Pontiff. While Peter made an attempt at appropriate decorum, the Pontiff’s five-foot-six diminutive figure momentarily disappeared in Johnny’s six-foot-three frame. Then they all proceeded, though this time with a handshake and a deep bow, to greet Pope’s friend, Cardinal Francesco. The only man who contrived to tower over Johnny, yet whom, in spite of his bulk and height, no one appeared to have noticed until this moment. 

"You must have been fed on the airplane, but the Ca’del Bosco is already chilled and some Cavolo Nero and Prosciutto Bruschetta are waiting to titillate your palates," Cardinal Francesco announced, a benevolent smile absolving the indulgencies designed to tempt man’s folly.

Ca’del Bosco was the Pope’s favourite Chardonnay, and as for the snacks, they would water anyone’s mouth.

Peter, still bloated from the last gourmet meal on the plane, bit his tongue to stop making any comments about eating habits. Of course, I could have eaten less, he admitted to himself, but...

With Peter normal daily staple consisting of sandwiches grabbed in spare moments in his Neurological Institute, regardless of his ethical objections, he couldn’t resist good food when it was placed before him.

Well, I am not a monk, he thought to himself, his glands salivating in expectation.

Johnny smiled. His thoughts were quite elsewhere.

He met the Pope before but had never been treated to such delicacies in his own villa. As for the Pontiff, he and Cardinal Francesco were known to frequently leave their Vatican apartments at night. The two of them, dressed in priestly black, would drive to the poorest districts of Rome and feed those in need, though seldom if ever with a bottle of Chardonnay. This was not exactly pontifical behaviour. The pomp, the finery and the gravitas, let alone the entourage, were missing. It is very doubtful if the recipients of Gio’s generosity recognized him for who he was. He looked like any other priest, only more insignificant.

This time Gio and his equally incognito assistant landed in the upper zones. Gio retained the keys to the villa given him by Sir Ian, obviously with Johnny’s approval.

Ten minutes later they were all sitting on the veranda overlooking Rome. This was the first time, possibly also the last time, in their lives that a bona fide Cardinal would act as a waiter. And a very good one at that.

There was a great deal to catch up on. Johnny hasn’t seen his parents for almost two years. He just completed a world tour conducting his own operas. In Europe, his music took him to Covent Garden in London, Opera de Paris, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg and obviously, the obligatory La Scala, or the Theatro alla Scala, in Milan. Then he flew to Beijing before returning to Rio and São Paulo for repeat performances of Exodus.

A shadow passed over Anne’s face. When she was twenty-nine, she’d already given birth to her two children, and Johnny was still alone. Her thoughts touched on a verse from the Bible. It’s been years since she’d read it, yet for a number of years her own life reflected her son’s sentiments. The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath nowhere to lay his head.

How sad, she thought. Nor has my darling son. He does it all for his people.

Johnny truly followed in his mother’s footsteps. He swore to restore the age of music of the great composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The music of Mozart, Beethoven, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Verdi, and other immortals.  It was as though he attempted to balance the negative vibrations of the world single-handed. Johnny’s music was undeniably modern, but it retained melody and harmony and bel canto, lost in the present day cacophony mostly dominated by Hollywood movie sound tracks, which with few exceptions seemed inspired by American and other idols. There was good music produced in the world, but it was rare, and seldom reached the ears of the masses. His did.

"Let them live in the Pandemonium of their own making, he once told his mother. It is hell in which they belong."

In Paradise Lost, John Milton named Pandemonium the capital of hell. It described today’s world precisely: a state of chaos, of utter craziness, of extreme confusion and disorder. Johnny’s music had implicit and explicit harmony. You felt it not just with your ears but also with your heart. Deeply. It stopped time.

Johnny wouldn’t have it any other way.

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After about an hour of small talk, intensive nibbling and toasts of Chardonnay to all present, Gio mentioned the peculiar if not taxing climatic conditions. In recent months the Tiber had mounted its banks four times in Rome alone, and more than a dozen times on its way to the sea. Gio was too busy with his pontifical duties to keep up with the meteorological matters on his own. But he was worried. He worried about all people, regardless where they lived.

My faith is weak, he once confessed to Anne. I wish I could be like you...

That was long ago. Before he became a Pope.

All eyes turned to Peter. Dr. Brown was not only a scientist but also the only one taking active part in the affairs of the world. The Vatican Incident was vivid proof of that. Anne, on the other hand, lived in a world of her own, still reaching out to those in need of her peculiar ministrations. Only now she no longer had to travel to see her delinquent customers. Instead she’d lie down on her sofa and enter a trance similar to that of Edgar Cayce of long ago. In that state she seems to expand her consciousness to reach those calling for help. Her help came on a mind-to-mind basis. The people in need didn’t even know she was opening their inner eyes.

She increased or accelerated her own, and then their rate of vibrations, Peter once explained, making it all clear, at least to himself. Peter saw the universe as an infinite variety of rates of vibrations. Anne suspected he picked up the idea from Einstein.

As for Gio—he was still busy repairing damage created by generations of his illustrious predecessors. Anne found it hard to believe that there had been more than 270 popes since St. Peter and among them there must have been as many saints as sinners, as in all other walks of life. Probably more of the latter.

Gio’s friend and personal secretary, usually referred to as Camerlengo, Cardinal Francesco, as tall as Gio was short, made sure that the Holy Father wouldn’t collapse under the weight of a billion-plus Catholics, some praising, most rebelling against the new Pontiff’s ‘Christian’ ways. Yet, after generations of churches growing nearly empty of worshippers, almost overnight they became filled to the brim.

Gio had filled them with the homeless.

How dare he treat the House of God with such disrespect! wrote an ardent Catholic in L’Osservatore Romano, the leading newspaper, which did its best to protect and uphold the ancient traditions. The L’Osservatore was not alone. The establishment, which obviously included the College of Cardinals, was afraid for their jobs. Yet, they were all good people, only... set in their ways. The old ways. Still partially anchored in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the next day L’Osservatore was looking for a new editor.

And Johnny? Johnny’s heart was anchored strictly in opera. Hence Peter was the only ‘normal’ person amongst the group. He kept up with the ‘real’ world, no matter how unreal it was becoming.

Peter looked at the small man with such a great heart. He, too, had been deeply involved in the Vatican Incident, and it was already then that the two men became fast friends. He thought of Gio as more of a brother than the most powerful priest in the world. Probably the only man who never abused his power.

It’s a global problem, Peter said at last. He held their attention. The climate has gone completely haywire. The weather seems to match the atmosphere set by the anarchists all over the world. It’s sort of nature imitating our state of mind...

Peter knew that both Gio and Johnny have been completely absorbed, each in his particular passion. Gio was consumed by trying to help one billion faithful, and Johnny saw nothing beyond opera. Peter looked around, measuring the depth of interest his friends might have in political and economical currents stirring the world. Satisfied, he took a deep breath.

As you know, it all began with the Arab Spring good many years ago. Little time later, all nations of the Middle East began to stir in frustrated dissatisfaction. The powerful nations of the world stepped in to ‘restore peace’, only to upset the balance of power even more. Within two years the Middle East and even the adjoining countries were in rapid decline of order. The old ways were out, the new were yet not ripe to fill in the void. The result was a bloody conflagration in search for power. Soon, the powerful nations of the world applied the old Macedonian maxim to ‘divide and conquer’—first by strategic military actions, then in hope of economical gain. The results were the rise of sectarianism, anarchists, and general Mafioso type groups, all struggling for their bit of goods and influence. It was hell on earth.

He paused for breath and a sip of Chardonnay.

Still is, he wanted to add, but held back. He’d said enough. Cardinal Francesco reached out to replenish his glass. The others declined the offer.

Cheers, he said after rolling the wine through his teeth. Not elegant but it was good, cool, and refreshing.

And then there was the oil... he continued, when no one spoke. No comment was necessary. They all knew the underlying factors of the strife.

And the weather...? Gio returned to the subject matter.

Well, it seems to me, Peter resumed, it all has to do with vibrations. You see, Albert Einstein insisted that there is no matter. That all is energy at different rates of vibration.

He looked around to make sure that he still held their attention.

Well... all is all, he asserted. All is all, he repeated. All includes our thoughts, actions, behaviour pattern, and... surely, the weather...

Gio looked at Peter intensely. Are you telling us that the weather patterns are caused by peoples’ behaviour?

Peter took another sip. The silence extended. Finally he looked up from his clenched fists.

I know that speaking as a scientist such thesis appears to be preposterous, yet...

Now Peter stared at Gio as if gathering courage to speak to him openly. They may have been friends, but Gio was still the Pontiff.

I’m sure that, as a man of God, you do accept that there is more to what we perceive with our senses... I mean that faith, emotions and imagination are forces that influence our lives... Peter’s tone sounded as though he was losing his previous confidence.

For a while they all looked at the filigree of lights stretching seemingly to the horizon. The traffic was far below, leaving them in blissful silence. It was difficult to talk of strife and death, or even of storms and floods and tsunamis, in the serenity of the evening.

He’s right, you know.

This was Anne.

The next moment each in their own mind saw shimmering air rising in erratic waves of vibrations stirring air, then clouds, then the waves of the ocean. The wailing of the wind grew in intensity. The waves advanced at fantastic speed from the west, over the fields stretching towards the Mediterranean all the way to Fiumicino, the Aeroporti di Roma, until they swirled all around them in powerful tsunamis. The next instant the images dissolved into a gentle breeze of a Roman evening.

Nobody moved.

What just happened, Cardinal Francesco whispered.

I wondered what it’s like to be angry, Anne whispered. It’s not nice, she added when silence prevailed.

They sat in silence for quite a while, once again each lost in their own thoughts. Gio and Peter experienced the intricate perambulations of Anne’s mind but never anger.  She’d risen above the emotional level. It was as though she was quite apart of the momentary vision she projected or conveyed to them. Neither Francesco nor even Johnny felt the brunt of it. For them it was a holographic projection. Not as real as for Gio and Peter.

The silence stretched. Anne looked relaxed, seemingly not aware of the images she’d projected on everyone’s minds. She never tried to do such things before. Her previous mental messages were always in direct response to needs she perceived at subliminal, in fact at subconscious level. That meant that she was not consciously aware of what precisely she was projecting. She always assumed that she is a means, an instrument, of the forces at play. Her will was limited to absolute acceptance of her mission, never of her ego or personal desire.

Had it been the same now, with those images of mayhem and destruction? Surely, she mused, surely I did not create them on my own... I couldn’t have. Surely... 

In fact, she only became aware of the images by reading her friends’ minds, as though her own mind did not experience any of them. Yet, she reasoned, those images must have been necessary, though she had absolutely no idea why. And then, as always after she was used in such a manner, as a projector of thoughts, she silently expressed her gratitude for being considered worthy of such work. This, as always, restored her peace of mind.

Don’t mention it.

She alone heard those words. They had the unmistakable sonorous sound of her old friend Gabriel.

***

2

The Promised Land

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Peter was very proud of his son. He knew that there were not many operatic premieres these days. Most people preferred entertainment that didn’t tax their brains. They didn’t mind their ears, but brain was a no-no land, not to be entered lest one was forced to start thinking. In fact, thinking was considered passé, almost in bad taste. Baseball, American or Canadian football, which had little to do with feet, and hockey, which has evolved into wrestling matches with intermittent free-for-all ‘punch-ups’, became the choices of the masses. In England and the rest of UK they found their mental satisfaction in cricket and football, real football, which in fact was played with feet, hence on this side of the Atlantic the sporting solons decided to call it soccer.

There is no accounting for human logic, Peter murmured, taking another sip of Black Label. He wouldn’t dream of admitting, even to himself, that the word ‘soccer’ did, in fact, have British roots.

In the rest of Europe, he continued to muse, indeed in the rest of world, there was little variety. There were a few other amusements, none designed to stimulate the human mind in an excessive way.

Thinking, he affirmed again, in half tone, such as required in a game of chess, is now considered in bad taste.

He glanced at his watch.

Soon it would be time to leave for the Premiere. But not yet. He took another sip of Scotch, his thoughts drifting to the countless peccadilloes the human race developed to escape excessive use of their brains. Electronic devises helped a lot in this endeavour.

He