A TRAP for a THOUGHT-FORM
a novel in the series
"PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY"
Chapter 23. GOLDEN BALLS
I woke up… And again in the morning! And again, in my own bed, neither in a coffin, nor on a frying pan in Hell! That, by itself, was optimistic!
My mental setup to wake up in the morning worked like clock! Of course, even before, I had woken up not at night, apparently, so automatically that my Consciousness didn’t register anything until my entrance to the Mansion in the evening.
“Anyway, I will try to be aware more often!”
I tried to identify all the replays, because the strange feeling of spinning on a carousel hadn’t ever left me since the Guardian danced with me to the old gramophone record in the Portal room.
REPLAYS
The Blizzard.
“Is there anything I can change?”
The program of literary parties, starting from the moment I entered the Mansion and the Guardian greeted me. However, each prelude with the Guardian was still different, at least our dialogues. But even after the 22nd night (oh, more than half the parties were already over!) I somehow didn’t feel these repeats as circles on water, which needed to be stupidly played to their logical conclusion. It clearly smelled like a culmination. And the further, the stronger…
The Cat… In general, he behaved strangely: he looked like a person, constantly appeared at a critical moment, except he didn’t speak in human…
“What to do with the Cat? To try to make him talk?”
The King of Swords with his standard question (could he walk me home). Almost always, I answered “yes” automatically, and it was NOT MY wish. It was like a program in me. Alien one. However, I was able to tell him “no” once and do on my own.
“So, am I able to bypass the program installed into me by someone else?”
Pasha’s appearance. I supported Pasha at a difficult moment in his life, and I did it right apparently, since Pasha disappeared.
“Shall I cross Pasha out of the list?”
Roman’s arrival. Hmmm… was it either a replay, or a glitch, or both at the same time? I was stuck on Roman. Totally. It seemed to be an intensive course: 40 nights with his transfer from the Knights to the Mages. Wasn’t the elementary magic course my exam? That was just an official reason to send me Roman again. “It means I have to do something, to make some decision not made in our shared past.” And I guessed which one. However, Roman could disappear instantly and already forever. I was completely unprepared for such a turn of events…
***
“‘The Golden Balls’ book is about the Worlds of Magicians, I hope,” the Guardian whispered in my ear and, taking off my furs, suddenly bit me on the neck! I flinched and looked at him accusingly. The Guardian raised his eyebrows looking surprised, “Doesn’t my Queen like vampire tenderness?”
“Why not,” I said coldly. “I adore it! But, unlike you, I don’t think that sex is a kind of human food.”
“Oh, that’s interesting! What do you think it is?” the Guardian continued defiantly fooling around, taking me by the arm into the cafe.
“A beautiful earthly addition to an even more beautiful, unearthly, and most important, eternal (!) feeling, that is Love. You can buy sex, but you can never buy Love. If you don’t feel Love for another person, then…”
“How much do you cost?” the Guardian interrupted me while making coffee.
“Don’t you still understand that I’m not a doll?”
The Guardian smiled and turned to me.
“You haven’t realized yet, Alice, that Death defeated Love a long time ago…”
“I agree,” I smiled. “Your phrase is mirrored, everyone finds the own meaning.”
The Guardian mirrored the phrase in his mind as “Love defeated Death” and cursed.
“One day”, he said as he brought me coffee and winked ominously, “you’ll see that in this story my meanings are much more important than all the others put together! It’s a pity that Koschey has already arrived, another singer of your dead Love, who pretends to be the Immortal. It’s so funny talking to you, my dear…”
The author of “The Golden Balls” materialized in the hall.
***
“Did you analyze the replays, Alice?” Roman asked mentally as I returned from the stage to the table.
“Yes…”
(“I was thinking about you… Apparently, in some way I am your debtor. Or rather, we both are debtors, since each of us is a Teacher and a Student at the same time. As soon as people fulfill their predestination in the fate of each other, they part. Everyone goes further, but in his own direction. The only question is the timing of the joint segment. I want it to last forever, but the main thing is to have it.”)
Without interrupting, Roman carefully read my thoughts, not even framed in a direct appeal to him.
“The King of Swords,” I said still mentally, addressing Roman directly, “is like a program. I learned to bypass it through my conscious ‘no’. Pasha can be deleted, probably I did all my best for him, since he disappeared.”
(“I remembered Pasha’s words. Why could an almost unfamiliar boy be sincere and write to me what I can’t even mentally say to you? The locals in that village consider him outsider in this world, but Pasha was absolutely right when he shouted through the endless Blizzard, the Time and the Space, that separated us, ‘Is it bad to say what you feel?’ Pasha’s words, imprinted at the beginning of this story, will live in me forever. Re-read them at your leisure, since you read me like an ordinary book, because I would like to tell you here and now all the same, word for word. It looks like a Mirror, isn’t it? The installed in me program, mine or someone else’s, doesn’t allow me to pronounce these words even mentally and even today — for how many nights? — before leaving.”)
Roman hugged me.
(“However, you too, Roman, you will stay with me forever, even when…”)
The hateful trill sounded.
“Have we finally reached the fears, Master?” Roman asked me aloud.
Task No. 23. STEP ASIDE No. 1
…Each person lives in his own — created by himself — reality, in a unique, but subjective world, conditionally similar to the Ball (Sphere). This subjectivity is due to the fact that no one, even being a gifted child of the Creator and a true magician, can describe, in order to incorporate further in one’s reality, the whole world and the entire Universe in detail.
Remaining inside your own world, you can see only a “separately taken” reality and examine its fragments under the microscope of private Consciousness, torn out of the context of co-existence, interpenetration and mutual influence of billions of worlds of other people, without even taking into account the worlds of entities that eventually make up a complex and constantly changing the Picture of Being.
For a more objective assessment of what is happening — by default, an objective assessment is able only for the Eternal Primary Source, i.e. the Creator, who is ABOVE all realities (such disposition doesn’t deny his presence inside each of them as well) — the Magician periodically makes a ritual step aside.
The first task is to step mentally into the Ball of a person, who is close to you, and to look at what is happening and at yourself from his point of view, from his world, with his eyes, and try to feel what he feels looking at you.
***
“Wanderer, are you traveling?” I knocked on the phone messenger, having returned home unaccompanied by the King of Swords.
“Just going to, Alice djan!”
“Sorry… I’m still… about my glitches in the Matrix.”
“Glad to help you if I can!”
“Every time I consciously return home at night from the Mansion, our City in the Blizzard seems puppet-like. Cardboard. Fake. Why?”
“There is almost no Love left in it, maybe,” the Wanderer supposed.
“And the guests in the hall look like Tarot cards. Are they either not real due to the lack of Love?”
“Your Consciousness filters reality according to your own laws, Alice, creating your own unique world…”
“Is that why the King of Swords couldn’t see my church?”
“Maybe.”
“But does it exist in reality?”
“Of course, as well as you, and me, and the King of Swords, and everything. However, not every church, unfortunately, exists in all realities at the same time…”