Nano Progress so far.

[joegoda]

3551 / 50000 words. 7% done!


It has been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Nobody really mentions what the roads IN hell are paved with. I suspect that it's yellow bricks, just like what used to be in Sedan Kansas. Well, back when Sedan, Kansas used to be a place.

Sedan is gone now, along with about another 10 or so square miles of surrounding Kansas countryside, blasted to bedrock and scarred like the face of a prizefighter. It's really all right, though. I didn't like Sedan, Kansas much. See, Sedan was the entry point to our world for the Something Bads from the Otherwhere. It was also the home of one really bad guy... the one that controlled the 'Bads. A guy that Robert Plumb called the Darkness or the Evil One. A guy who either held the Aspect of Ammit, the Eater of the Dead, or was actually Ammit itself. Kinda hard to tell. When they get that big and mean, it really doesn't matter.

I guess I should start from near the beginning. My name is Chester Beebe and I'm a wizard. More like a mage, I guess. I don't like being a wizard, and I don't really like being a mage, but hey, what can you do? I didn't choose to be one, any more than you can choose your parents. It just kinda happened.

Robert Plumb was the guy that turned me into this wizard, actually. Until I met him in my teens, I was just a kid who read a lot of science fiction, dreamed really big dreams and knew that magic existed. Not the sort of magic that is done with cards and string and wire. But real magic... the sort that makes the world go round.

He, along with the witch sisters Madeline and Madame, taught me about the ways of the world and the Otherwhere, that space that lies between this world and all the other worlds that exist. And believe me, those other worlds? They do exist.

Robert taught me how to see the world for what it really is - a coherent string of energetic connections between anything and everything else. All magic is, is the manipulation of that energy, the bending of that energy to one's will. And if your will is strong enough, anything is possible. And it's not even a bending of the energy. It's more of an agreement, a... cooperation between your life force and it.

All magic comes with a price tag. It's the requirements of balance, and that balance is something that we call karma. Most folks think of karma as a law, but it really isn't. What karma is, from what I've learned, is nothing more and nothing less than balance. Balance can be upset, can be twisted and turned, and when that happens, bad things happen to... well, when that happens, bad things happen to everything. A universe out of balance spins out of control pretty easy.

So, when a wizard or a witch, or a mage or whatever does a bit of magic, they have to be careful to make sure that the balance is paid, that the scales swing even. And it's not a matter of making sure that good and evil exist in equal portions. Good and evil can be totally mismatched and the karmic balance sheet can still be even.

The karmic balance all depends on what is happening at any given time. Really. All of Karma for all the world depends on what is happening moment by moment and if that moment is balanced in time and if there is enough of... well, if there is just enough.

So the concept of 'instant karma' doesn't really mean anything. Do something bad over here doesn't mean that something bad will happen to you further down the road. It just means that the universe may have required something bad to be done, just to balance the karmic records. The same goes for doing something good. It just means you did something good. Doesn't mean you get a voucher for the Universe to do something good to you. It just means that you did something good that the Universe needed done.

Got it? Forget this whole 'reward - punishment' thing. That's a human concept, like Love or Hate or Fair Fight rules. The real universe doesn't care what you've done, period. The real universe couldn't care one whit about you. The real universe doesn't even care, because it isn't a person. It's just a big old universe, chugging along as best as it can, and like any sort of system that moves, it requires balance. And that balance is called Karma.

It is the using of this balance and the manipulation of the energies that connect everything to everything else... that's the real magic, kids. It is what creates situations that normal folks don't want to think or know about. It is what caused a creature like Ammit to exist and what caused the little town of Sedan, Kansas to become a 10 square mile blast pit.

If you are wiling to pay the price tag for keeping karma balanced AND you understand how to manipulate the energies that bind the Universe together, then no only will you have God-like powers, but you will be a much better man that I will ever be.

All I got is a little knowledge, a little talent, a collection of books written over the past three hundred years and the Aspect of the Demigod Pan buried in my subconscious.

Aspects are not connected with magic. Or, to be totally honest, they are connected to magic, but not in a useful sort of way. What connects an Aspect to magic is that an Aspect is created when enough minds come together and focus belief on a particular conceptual Deity idea.

That Deity idea, be it Santa Claus or the Velveteen Rabbit, will take on a life of it's own and float around in the universe until it comes across a host body that vibrates along the very same harmonic cycle as does the coherent idea. When that happens, this coherent idea will sort of merge with the host and bury deep within the host mind and lay dormant. This Deity Idea is the Aspect of a God or a demon or a magical character. It is not a God or demon or magical character, and this is important to note. An Aspect is just that, an aspect of a thing, a shadow of it. An Aspect of a thing that has enough projected belief that the belief becomes a real thing.

An Aspect can lie inside a person for decades and never be activated. It is sort of like having a buried personality just waiting to be awakened. Usually, it requires a near-death experience or some other trauma to cause the Aspect to appear and come to the front of the mind. Even so, this Aspect cannot perform God-like acts. An Aspect can, however, perform acts that may appear God-like, because the human mind is incredibly powerful, depending upon genetics, focus and force of will. And if those three elements are all very strong in the host, then the Aspect can have a field day, if it is allowed to run free.

And that is what I carry in me. The Aspect of Pan, that horny little Demigod from ancient Greek. The guy that became the symbol for Satan, cloven hooves and horns and all. The aspect of Pan in me isn't nearly the shadow of what he has been claimed to be. He's lazy and he tends to sleep a lot, staying dormant at the back of my brain.

I can call him up, if the need arises, or if the situation is particularly interesting to him. Pan is, literally, another personality residing in my head, with his own attitudes and likes and dislikes. His likes generally tend toward the physical; his dislikes tend toward what isn't physical - like thinking. We live together in the same body as roommates, and as roommates, he's pretty good and cleans up after himself.

When I first met Robert Plumb, he was already hundreds of years old, though I didn't know it at the time. He took an interest in me while I sat in a library reading, and he found the flavor of my mind a curiosity. It's sort of like walking through a bakery and thinking "hmmm... those brownies smell Good!" Except he did it from miles away and the brownie was my tiny little brain.

So, he and the witch sisters took me under their wing and tried to train me. Oh, they didn't teach me any spells or really useful stuff like that. They tried to get my little brain organized, so that rather than fill it up with pages of words and incantations and ceremony, they worked on a concept they called spiritual focus.

In one of the sessions where I had gotten really frustrated with my lack of apparent magical ability, I groused out loud that I wasn't learning anything.

"Look," Bob said, "You're learning all the time. Every breath you take is a learning experience, you just don't know it. Your mind and body are constantly shifting as it pulls in new information. You're just too dumb to know it."

He reached over and touched my hand, looking into my blue eyes with his own. "Close your eyes," he told me. After I did, he said, "Now, open your mind, like a flower, like a lotus. Let it expand outward, and keep your eyes closed. Let your mind be your eyes."

"Be the ball, huh?" I kidded him.

"Yeah, Chet," he chuckled. "Be the ball."

So I did. I became the ball, if you call the ball the Universe and call being the ball merging with the Soul Winds that flit in the Otherwhere and seeing everything for exactly what it was: an tremendously interconnected series of lines of force joining everything together.

I could see colors, magnificent hues and shades of textures and realized that I was looking at the things around me. The chairs, the walls of the apartment where Bob and the witches lived, even the books had dull but deep colors. I turned my attention to Bob and focused and gasped.

He was a pure white light, with tiny flecks of dark blue and violet. Small shady lines of green flitted in and around his astral body. I gasped out loud, and he laughed, which broke me out of my focus.

"You shouldn't let outside things interrupt you, you know," he chastised. "What you saw is what really is. It's how your mind interprets the Otherwhere, that place between here and there. When you get good enough and strong enough, you can leave this side and travel through the Otherwhere."

"Be careful, though," he warned, "it takes a lot of energy, and you aren't ready or focused enough."

Bob never did teach me any spells. He thought spells were crutches for folks that didn't know how to use real magic. Oh, he knew spells, so it wasn't like he couldn't have taught any to me. He just figured that I didn't need them, that they would just get in the way of my learning.

So I kept practicing, and I kept learning. Bob was right about that energy expense, though. Every time I took a trip to the Otherwhere, it left me very tired and very grouchy.

I learned to do a thing I called 'casting a kite'. I take a part of my self and send it out flying across the Otherwhere, attached to the line that represents my soul. It flies out and out, just like a kite on the wind, and allows me to seek out whatever I'm looking for. Which was generally nothing of any importance. It was mostly just practice or for checking in on friends or family to make sure they were doing all right. Cheaper than a phone call, in those days before cell phones.

I learned to do wardings and shields; shields are those bits of will that kept bad things from attacking or hurting me, and wardings are just little things that will warn you of an approaching whatever. I learned to draw really good geometric shapes. The pentagram is only one useful shape, though it is the one most folks think about when they think about magic. It's good for trapping and holding. Not so good for summoning. That's what a circle is for. Squares are used for bringing solid things from there to here, like if you have that crazy craving for a cheesecake and need it right now!

I watched Bob as he demonstrated pentagrams and stars and circles and squares and all that sort of stuff and I practiced until I could do them with nothing more than a pointing finger, making the dust on the ground puff up and form what I wanted. But he never told me the secret of it all, how to make it work. I never got the hang of summoning an elemental, and I never had a use for trapping a demon (probably because I never ran into one and Bob figured calling one up was just stupidly dangerous). I never even got to the point where I could call forth a cheeseburger using magic.

Bob told me that I would eventually figure it all out. :Great", I grumbled to him. That's like handing a six year old a book on Quantum Mechanics and saying "Eventually, you'll get the idea."

Bob, in his wise way, nodded his head and said "Exactly so. Just like that."

Well, he was right. One day, during my first run at college, some jerk sent a demon after me. I didn't know what to do except run, so I did that. When I ran out of a place to run, I could only stop and fight, so I did that too. When fighting didn't do any good and I was darn near scared out of my mind... something tripped a switch and words poured out of my mouth that came from God knows where.

Mister Badass demon flitted back to the Otherwhere that he had come from and didn't bother me again. I was eighteen at the time, and puzzled as all hell. I called Bob as soon as I could, using a real phone, rather than casting through the Otherwhere.

"Are you all right?" was the first thing out of his mouth.

"Yeah, I'm okay, Bob," I said. "Scared as hell and a bit shaken up. I got a few scratches but could you please tell me what just happened? What did I do and where did that spell come from?"

"Well," he said, "I'm guessing that you must have pissed someone off. Not just any someone, either, someone that could call up a demon and send it after you. Do you remember any of the words you used?"

Now, before you start to assign a whole "heaven and hell" concept to demons, let me explain. demons are not the imps of Satan. Or at least I don't think they are. Just as belief can manifest the Aspects of Gods and Demigods and even fictional characters, belief can also manifest bad things like demons and... and... well, demons are a good start for bad things.

The worst thing that belief causes is what I call the Something Bads, or just 'Bads. The 'Bads are the coherent form of all the despair, all the hopelessness, all the sadness and gloom that overtakes people from time to time. Whenever someone loses hope, the 'Bads are there and growing. Whenever a war is made, the 'Bads are there and feeding. Think of them like Soul Locusts. They feed on negativity, in all forms, but they really feast when there's a dark cloud of absolute feeling of loss.

I have a theory that all bad things, like demons and such, come from the 'Bads. I could be wrong. They could be totally different things. I don't know. I wish Bob were around so I could talk to him about it.

As for Heaven and Hell... I don't know about them either. If they exist, they are so far outside of my experience that all I can do is guess. I've seen the Gateway to the other side so I know there's another side... a continuance of a souls journey to whatever destination. Heck, I even know a Gatekeeper, those immortals who aid a soul through the Gateway. I know him personally, in fact. He's my brother, Gary, who passed away years ago. How he got to be a Gatekeeper is something he isn't telling me, so I reckon that's a story for another time.

But is a soul's destination Heaven or Hell? Your guess is as good as mine. I figure I'll have to die to find out, and I'm just not all that interested in the answer to take that step. I'll find out eventually, I figure. If it helps you to think about going to heaven, that's cool and good. For me, I'll just do the best I can with what I have and wait until my ticket is punched before I read my seating arrangement.

Back to my story: I told Bob what little I could remember of what I had uttered when I was attacked. His response was rather odd at the time.

"Um." he said. "Maybe you have an Aspect."

"An aspect?" I scratched a cut on my shoulder, courtesy of the demon. "An aspect of what?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "You'll have to find that out on your own when you find out. But apparently, whatever it is you have, it saved your life. Be glad of that and move on."

Yeah, Bob was a lot of help like that. Cryptic 101 was him.

"How will I know, Bob?" I asked. "And what's an aspect anyway? I mean, besides the obvious answer, because I'm assuming you don't mean the definition in the dictionary."

"An Aspect," he told me, "is created by a long period of sustained belief, and is a harmonically viable presence that exists in some people, attracted to the particular vibrationary pattern of their organic and ethereal bodies."

"Cool," I nodded, not that he could see me. Maybe he could, who knows? "What does that mean in English?"

Bob sighed. "It means, Chester, that you might have company in that head of yours. You might have a submerged personality that showed itself to save your life, and in doing so, saved its own life. An Aspect is like carrying the imprint of an old god or some other imaginary character in your head. If you do, it was attracted harmonically to your body the day you first became conscious. Which means at your birth I would imagine, but with you, who knows? You've always been rather odd, which is why I picked you in the first place."

"Another personality? Like in schizophrenia?" I was getting tired of standing, so I sat down on the floor of the house I shared with my college chums. We were lacking in chairs, but believed in gravity.

"I can see college is not wasted on you, sir," Bob chuckled. "Not exactly like schizophrenia, but almost. This personality didn't develop through trauma. Rather, this is like a painting that is hidden under another, different painting. Two totally separate, though joined at the mind, entities."

He rambled on explaining how Aspects were formed and that an Aspect could be any character that was popular enough that a whole bunch of people believed that the character was real. Somewhere there is an Aspect of Sherlock Holmes. Somewhere there is an Aspect of Daffy Duck, which is an oddly disturbing thought.

"I would guess," he continued, "that your Aspect, if you do have one, is one of the more popular magical type of characters. Probably still asleep inside of you, I'd bet. When he or she is ready to show itself, it will." He paused and then hummed thoughtfully.

"Of course, if you don't have an Aspect, then it's also possible you were temporarily possesed."

"Possessed?" I almost dropped the phone. "That can't be good! ... Can it?"

"Saved your life, didn't it?" was the answer. I could almost see Bob running his hand through his dark red hair. "I really don't know, Chester. I could take a peak at you through the Otherwhere, but I'm a bit busy with another project and I don't want to spend that much energy. Regardless, if it is possession or an Aspect, whatever it was, it was looking after you. Consider it a good thing."

I heard a voice lilting in the background. It was either Madeline or Madame, Bob's witch roomies.

"Chester, don't worry. You're fine, and I don't foresee anything bad happening to you. Let it go and learn from it. I have something I have to do, so I'm ringing off. Come see me next time you're in town."

Before I could say "Okay," the line disconnected. Which left me feeling just a bit cold. Bob usually didn't just 'ring off' like that. Something was up. Something that would have to wait for my next trip to Tulsa to find out.