Prologue: Dark
Kai was seated at the news desk of a prominent TV station. The cameras were on her loosely; if only because the focus of this event was on the show’s host, Ben O’Malley—not on her. Ben was something else, as Kai soon gathered. He was known to be loud, obnoxious and obtuse. He literally crafted his career out of over-talking and belittling his guests, to the point that most of them would resolve to merely sit in the seats reserved for them with blank eyes and bland smiles—for the exposure. Ben O’Malley was that special kind of rude that people avoid if they can. But he hosted a show on national TV–The Ben O’Malley Show. The TV station his show aired, as a whole, was known for covering stories with a slant that showcased their blind, bigoted viciousness. It was a body of work that came off as just plain mean. And backwards. BUT, it was a tremendous opportunity simply to be seen in that circus seat. No matter how horribly he treated the people who agreed to be there, other people would take the same seat the very next day to be treated similarly. Ben actually liked watching his guests squirm in their seats, like they were dancing for him. His audience loved it! Ben parroted their narrowest points of view and lowest vibrational stance. He gave their ignorance value and thus, he gave them a voice.
Ben also loved the attention. He, in his mind, was a star. The irony of this, was not lost on Kai at all. She knew the significance of stars and Star People in particular. She knew both of these actualities weren’t anywhere near possible for Ben or the radar of his audience. She knew that before the people of the dying world would remember their heritage, they had to face themselves. And before then, Ben would have to face her. Which, was also ironic. She knew, based on Ben’s reputation, that she wasn’t seated adjacent to him to have her point of view honored when she spoke it–if, she got to speak at all. And finally, she knew, she was seated where she was for something else. Something…more. Although, she had no idea what. Which, to be fair, was kind of the story of her life.
Kai was sitting in Ben’s circus seat to speak to the militarization of (infiltrated) police forces and the upswing of fatal shootings that what appeared to target humans with high concentrations of melanin in their skin. The police disagreed with this assessment. Ben agreed with their disagreement. Lots and lots of other people disagreed with their disagreement. Necessarily, there had been an outpouring of protests, demonstrations and calls for reform. There were angry people on all sides of the issue. It was, to be fair, a fuckery opera of fear and mis-understanding all around. Kai knew fear was a funny bedfellow. But that didn’t matter. It appeared that “things” were escalating amongst the people. Ben O’Malley and his ilk were stoking fear’s fire, causing “things” to get much, much worse. But then, Kai turned up. She had not been associated with any organized group, but her voice was added to the mix of those speaking passionately about possibility for the future of the human race. If any. She was there, on that day, supposedly, to lend some balance to the dialogue that was happening on the world stage. If she got to talk. Ever.
Ben was truly hogging the discussion. It made her feel uneasy, like something was amiss. Plus, it was freezing in the studio. Unnaturally so. She wondered if it was Ben and the station’s viciousness that left the atmosphere so bitterly cold… and oddly clammy. She felt like ghosts had populated every blank space in the entire studio, making the air dense, damp and hard to breathe.
She looked around the set at all of the producers and assistants staring at her like their eyeballs were made from needles. She felt vulnerable. To contrast the set being so icy, her un-comfortability made her skin feel extraordinarily hot. Plus. She was pregnant. Stai pregnant—which, to be fair, was a whole other thing. It got so bad, when she breathed out, a gush of steam pushed through her mouth.
Great. Kai said in her head. Now, I’ll probably look like a dragon to these people. Give them something else silly to be scared of. She said to herself in her head. She sighed loudly. She turned to face Ben. Before she knew it, without even trying she was staring at the side of his face, watching his mouth move. She realized she had no idea what he was saying. Like, he was speaking a whole undiscovered language. This, too, gave her pause. Okay Ben. Am I supposed to sit through all of your bloated commentary with my mouth shut or tell you what it really is? Waiting on you boo. She said in her head and finished with a quieter sigh.
As the package ran of one of Ben’s ridiculous segments, Kai rolled her eyes. Who of sound mind actually agrees to being abused by arguing with this fool? She thought. It was her Aunt Lara’s idea. Sitting in the circus seat, now with steam filing out of her face, Kai had finally begun to think better of being there. The thought crossed her to dramatically upend her seat and storm out. But something inside of her told her to wait. Something was moving. Something had shifted in the studio and she was to bear witness. The words, Thy will be done kept ringing around in her ears. Fine. She said in her head.
When the video package finished, not surprisingly, Ben continued talking. Kai rolled her eyes again. While she waited for Ben to stop jabbering enough to ask her a question, finally, she quickly replayed the events that caused her to be at that station in the first place. Because, what else did she have to do, right? She wrote a piece on her blog about the coming Shift and consequent Rise of the People during The Transition. It was an inspired offering that she couldn’t say for sure she understood. It was a list, of sorts. Actually, it was more like points of growth that would be required of The People of Earth in the coming times. Her offering was well received and hailed by millions. She soon had a full speaking schedule and was invited as a guest on all sorts of programs. People wanted to know about her ideas… and… if she was some sort of a prophet. But she was careful. She wanted the piece itself to be the focus; she didn’t want to be the face of a new ideology. Even though she kind of was, on the low. That was the point of her even being alive wasn’t it? To usher in and nurture ‘The New Earth’?
Suddenly, she felt sleepy. Like, hard to keep her eyes open sleepy. In an attempt to keep pending snores in check, she decidedly went back to watching Ben’s mouth move—which didn’t help matters as much as she hoped. Now, to her, it looked like he was chewing tobacco. She still couldn’t understand most of what he was saying, so she giggled to herself as she imagined THE Ben O’Malley as an outlaw with a spittoon. She was still vaguely in her thoughts and half giggling when O’Malley directed his commentary toward her. She hadn’t heard his question, but she knew the answer anyway.
“Yes.” She said blinking herself out of her daze.
“Yes?” O’Malley looked disappointed. He had asked his question seeing that Kai was distracted. He was hoping to catch her off guard. Instead, he was caught. It took him a second to regroup. “…So you do believe that police should be removed from their posts? You do believe that there is no further value in having police keep the peace, because of these so-called abuses of power?” Ben asked this question with more nastiness in his tone than was necessary. But also like he knew subconsciously that he was about to fall off of a building. It was a dumb question.
“Maybe yes…” She began, calmly. Almost too calmly. “In the days coming, they’ll be unnecessary anyway. The type of militia that so many police ranks have become is outdated. It doesn’t go with the times. Far too many officers have forgotten their humanity. Couple that with intolerance and lack of empathy and reasoning skills. War training and weapons of war for daily peace keeping scenarios. Using the poorest people in the community as cash cows and suffering no consequences. No cause and effect within the law and the communities they are sworn to serve.”
“Are you convicting police of corruption? Is that what you just said? All police are corrupt?”
“Is that your takeaway from what I said?” Kai asked, smiling blandly. “What is the saying…? Absolute power corrupts absolutely? I wasn’t making an argument for corruption, but since you brought it up, I will say your reasoning is spot on.”
“I didn’t say the police are corrupt. I was asking you if you were saying the police are corrupt.”
“Actually, you asked me if I believed police were unnecessary in the coming times. I hadn’t finished answering that question when you brought up your brilliant point that corruption too would add to the reasoning that in coming times we may evolve past the type of policing we know today, yes?” Kai blinked after she finished and took pains to look Ben directly in his face for good measure. He looked like he wanted to say something; but he was breathing heavily instead. Kai smiled only slightly as she continued. “So. We have the military style of policing communities, milking the poor for cash, corruption and the lack of accountability, couple that with intolerance and bigotry and we’ve got what we’ve got–a Molotov cocktail of fear and pain that unquestionably leads to the kind of destruction no one wants to live through. It’s happening now. There is a cause for every effect. Just because we don’t suffer the consequences we should, swiftly and in fairness, doesn’t mean we don’t suffer them at all. Would you agree?” Kai said to Ben directly, but she didn’t wait for him to respond. She continued. “Then again, to continue to answer your original question, maybe no. We live in strange times, yes? There are still very good, conscious people who are very good and conscious holders of peace. Which is the job description of police officers. These men and women will do well in the coming times. Luckily, we never worry about the lost ones. They will find their way eventually. We do, however, worry about the damage they cause on the path to finding their way. That’s the problem. Drowning people, drown people.” She said. Her voice was so plain and soft, everyone in the room, even Ben, had to move closer to make sure they were hearing her correctly.
Ben looked struck. He was rarely at a loss for words, but being in Kai’s presence squeezed something in his spirit. Her frequency was so strong, he felt like he was being crushed against a wall. He could not breathe. Kai smiled at him while looking in his eyes. He coughed uncomfortably, trying to catch his breath.
“Uh, you. You mean to say…” his voice trailed off. He was holding his throat. He wanted so desperately to go to commercial. But he couldn’t even speak the words.
“I have a question for you, Ben, if you don’t mind. Do you believe that all lives have value?” She asked so matter-of-fact, Ben hardly knew he was being asked anything. Meanwhile, Kai sat smiling at him. He raised his chin, daze-like to answer.
“Of course I don’t.” He said plainly, in a fit of honesty he couldn’t control. All the producers in the studio gasped. A few giggled at the surprise. He looked around helpless, but compelled (and maybe stuck?) where he was.
“Ah. That’s a shame. Do you believe your life has value? I mean, we can only see the world through the same lens we see ourselves. If all lives don’t share the same value. Maybe at least your life has some.” Kai said, looking intently at Ben. He wanted desperately to look away from her gaze, but there was nothing he could do except answer her.
“No.” He said sadly. “I don’t see much value in my life either.”
“Hm. That’s something isn’t it? How we see the world through the same lens we see ourselves. So why do you do this show? Why do you do this work? Why do you spew this hate? Do you know it’s contagious?”
“Yes.” He said, squirming in his seat.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I know it’s contagious. I know people get hurt because of the work we do here. But… I do it because… I don’t care about them. Any of them. I don’t really believe any of the stuff I say on this show. None of us do really. But somebody has to be the voice for fear. Fear is lucrative. We cover the other side of issues. Call us Devil’s Advocates.” Ben said, sounding weirdly triumphant.
Kai choked loudly, knowing Ben didn’t know the really, real significance of his statement. “Yes.” She said exhaling. “Forgive me, continue.”
“Somebody has got to do the dirty work. Might as well be me. I know I’m going to hell. I’ll be in good company.” He said.
“No. You won’t.” Kai said pointedly. “There is no hell. Not really. There is only the hell we force ourselves and those around us to live in. We make our own hells and heavens through our work. Hell isn’t a place we go after we die. It is a vibratory frequency of fear, doubt, worry, lack, limitation, selfishness, ignorance and greed. It’s like a net that catches all of our awful, barren ideas and helps us build individual worlds around those barren ideas– in part through our conversations. You have helped build a lot of barren worlds, Ben O’Malley. No, there is no hell. But there are always causes and effects. There are always consequences for our actions. I will show you and you will see.” She said, finishing like she had just unintentionally unleashed a spell on him.
Ben looked irritated instantly. A ‘how dare you’ look spread violently across his face. There was something about Kai’s brown skin, calm dignity and almost royal tone that made him want to spit. Add to that his unintended honestly, and he was irate enough to allow his anger to spill over. His rage made him sound drunk.
“If I’m honest, history proves that pale… people colonized the world for good reason. We know how to run a world! First of all, the concept of “pallor” is funny. And stupid. Brilliant even. It’s a concept more than anything. A way to make people feel good or bad about themselves, based entirely on something arbitrary and impossible to change. And you bought it! All of you! We’ve been milking this concept of the superiority of pale skin for centuries. But it’s more than that now. We know its ending. Each of us can feel it. Our reign is ending and we’re afraid. What will we do with our staged superiority when it no longer holds any value? At least we have the aptitude to know what is valuable. People of other… melanin, don’t know their own value until we show them. Until we take it from you and sell it back to you. Then you see. But it’s too late then. It’s ours then, you see? We show you because you can’t see it without us. You need us. But what do you know? We wrote the book. But you don’t listen! Why won’t you just listen?! The last shall be first and the first shall be last. Things got mixed up. Things are mixed up. How did things get so mixed up?!! Last shall be first and the first shall be last! Know your place! Why won’t you people do as your told and know your place?!!! ” He said in a full, foamy, drunken-sounding, yell. It took him a few beats to register his own almost coherent words. He looked surprised, as though he hadn’t expected to say exactly that. Or like he was expecting whatever had possessed his body to show itself. When no such thing happened, he covered his mouth as a precaution.
Kai’s stiff smile loosened some.
“There is a guru on the Earth plane who teaches her constituents Feel-Deal-Heal. It’s self-explanatory really. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to transcending it. Until we can face our truth, no matter how ugly or silly or misguided, the battle we fight on our insides will always reflect the conditions we live with on our outsides. Turns out you may reflect the audience you serve more than you had imagined. Like I said, drowning people drown people. Take a deep breath.” Kai said, never taking her eyes off of Ben.
He took a big, loud breath as he stood up from his seat, with one of his hands still covering his mouth. When he was finally erect on the landing behind the news desk, he put his free hand over his mouth too. He looked around the studio noticing that it was so quiet a pin could drop it it would sound like an explosion. He took in the horror on all the faces of the people he shared the studio and his career with. It was just too much. Without another word, he ran off the set.
Kai’s gaze shifted to the camera closest to her. Her focus was on the red blinking light. She sat watching the light while the staff kept the camera on her. Every person in the studio was stuck still, staring at her. They were trying to piece together what had just happened. How, the ever talking Ben O’Malley had been silenced by his own words. Had they just witnessed magic? Was Kai a witch?
The cameraman closest to her was trembling like he was about to have a panic attack. He was at least 7 paces away from where she was seated, but she could hear yelling through his ear piece and she assumed his producer was telling him to stay on her. The cameraman, for his part, was whispering “But I’m scared.” He said, apparently thinking he couldn’t be heard like he was yelling in the quietest room on the planet at the moment. Some more yelling happened through his ear piece. Kai envisioned it was the producer telling the guy to “suck it up.” Meanwhile, the cameraman was literally losing his shit. No sooner than Kai looked directly at him, smiling brightly, the guy dropped his camera and ran out of the studio in the same direction as Ben. Without missing a beat, another camera person (who was obviously waiting for this exact moment), picked up the dropped camera and directed the lens at her. The rest of the studio staff stood watching in awe. Silently hoping she would do another trick. The lights started to flicker. Then, the studio began to shake.
Kai let the confusion play out for a while. She wanted the viewers to see her face and know that what they were experiencing was real. She was there. And they knew why she had come. After several minutes of silence and shaking and flickering lights and little red blinking lights traveling from camera to camera; she turned to face the nearest lens with a red light and said simply,
“Bashodiin. That means, it is done. Then, as if on cue, everything in the studio and the building at large went dark.
She got up from her seat slowly. All the lights were out, but she could see perfectly. There were people scurrying around trying to find things. Their phones, mostly. But there were no tiny boxes of phone screen lights that popped on. Darkness was the only thing that was persistent besides the sounds of people trying to figure out what happened. The studio was pitch, pitch black. Not even a red blinking light survived. She heard someone a few paces in front of her ask in a panic,
“Is it raining? A storm?”
“No.” someone else answered. “Just a blackout in the middle of the day, for no good reason. You know she did it.” He finished. Kai saw him look in her direction, but not because he could see her. But just because he knew which direction she had been seated.
“Stop panicking, will you? The generator will be on any second. Don’t act like blackouts don’t happen in random. Everybody calm down.” Another person said in a definitive tone. He was sure.
But this wasn’t a regular kind of black out. This was something else. Kai knew it. But she said nothing. She simply looked around at all the scared faces huddling in corners or banging into things as they blindly tried to find their way to a light source. Their electric doors were stuck shut because no electric device worked. Every single light in their building was out. They were as blind in that moment as they had been in every moment prior at that station. Pilfering darkness to their audience, it seems, finally brought them appropriate conditions to suit their work. Kai laughed on the inside, if only because laughing out loud would make her sound smug and creepy. The circumstances were smug and creepy enough. The irony was priceless though.
Kai stepped off of the landing where the news desk was perched, walked through the open spaces toward the locked studio door. With little effort, she opened the door and walked through to the dark hallway. She stopped and turned around mid-stride to say,
“This building is as dark as your work. If you want the lights on, you have to be the light you want.” She said, matter-of-fact. She left her words to stick out in the darkness like a Times Square billboard.
She left the door open, but no one followed her out. They all stood and sat paralyzed in the pitch darkness, listening to the click clack of her heels down the long hallway. They all jumped with the shrill Bing! Of the elevator. Their bones churned with the mechanical sound of the elevator as Kai made her descent to, presumably, the lobby. They all were stuck, right where they stood and sat. In the darkness they created and perpetuated. It would have been easy for them to simply get up and follow Kai out, but they didn’t. And there was no rational reason why they all stayed in that room and didn’t move. There were hundreds of other employees in that building, on that day Kai was a guest on that show that aired on that channel, born in that building that went completely dark. All of those people, including Ben, sat waiting for the lights to come back on.
When the doors of the elevator opened and Kai stepped out, the lobby looked like the sun was sitting in it. It was a stark contrast from the rest of the building. There was absolutely no bustle. The building was as quiet as a cathedral in the dead of night. But the lobby was as bright as all of Aphroditia. As she got closer to the front door, she nodded and smiled at the same grinning security guard seated at the entrance desk when she arrived. She didn’t stop. The click clack of her heels was the soundtrack to how briskly she wanted to get out of that building. Like, the ghosts that plagued the studio were on her heels. The security guard stood up in all of his broadness, which caused his large black star neck tattoo to become visible from his shirt collar. She picked up her pace toward the door. The guard marched from his post and followed Kai through the thick glass doors she opened quickly, like the bleak darkness of the rest of Ben O’Malley’s blighted building was also chasing her.
