Chapter 15 Bad Moon Rising Leer, Seeing Again is Believing Morer

If you've ever had trouble figuring out whether or not you are in your own body, in your own time, in the body of someone else in a time other than your own or in the body of another but remembering a time when you were in that other body but it was about to happen, you have some idea of what it must have been like to be Leer about five seconds from now. Max was walking a few steps ahead of Victor toward a plain gray door on an equally plain gray wall. They were in the lowest level of a parking ramp which must have been thirty levels deep. Leer had lost track when the names of species of animals replaced the alphabetical sequence which spanned sub-A through sub-Z. He would have questioned his own safety being in the basement of a skyscraper whose floor numbering system seemed like an afterthought if he hadn't already been there tomorrow. This is exactly what was messing with his mind. The gray door and wall were too common. The only way to determine which memory was about to unfold would be to watch Max very closely. He had a nagging feeling of nervousness, an unpreparedness which was troubling him because he couldn't remember how many times he walked through that door before all Varst broke loose. The most important clue was nothing more than a moment of hesitation by Max as she approached the door. Leer knew that if Max paused, he had to be ready to fight. For the moment, however, he could relax, Max stepped swiftly to the door and flung it open, passing through so quickly that Leer had to step it up a bit to catch the door before it closed itself. Max was on a mission. She may have been losing interest in the violence coursing through the system in which she found herself but she absolutely loved telling a bunch of hard-ass guys what to do.

"All right, all right, let's have everybody out here right now," she announced as she entered a massive warehouse after proving her way through a series of sophisticated security devices, establishing her identity and alerting those inside to her arrival. "Where's Aldo?" she asked sharply as she surveyed the men who approached as rapidly as a bunch of guys can without looking like they're running to mama. "I need Aldo out here now!" she exclaimed but no one seemed to pay any attention to what she was saying. They had all stopped dead in their tracks. Victor had slid his way right up behind her, so close and so quickly that his breath on her neck triggered her defenses. Instinctively she pivoted, driving her elbow into Victor's gut, following through in a single motion with a jab to his face, moving so quickly that she had no time to recognize his features. Fortunately, this was of no concern to Victor, he simply collapsed his stomach in on itself absorbing what little blow there was as his body bended in anticipation of the elbow. Her jab was effortlessly diverted into a body lead followed by a quick torque turn from Victor and then they were dancing. the moment she realized what was happening, Max burst out laughing.

"May I lead?" Victor asked.

"By all means," Max returned as Victor bowed slightly toward her, signalling the end of the dance, her slight curtsy turning the spotlight over to Victor.

Leer turned toward the men who were frozen in shock at what had just occurred. Max was actually giggling at this point. The men just stared. These were some serious bad-asses, they carried weapons, knew how to fight, enjoyed JumpJuice and drinking and thought that the only dance of any value at all was a lap dance. Victor looked directly at each one of them in turn then said, "This shipment will not be taken from us. This shipment will go through. I have every confidence that you will deliver the Juice on-time and in full. However, if any one of you causes this operation to fail, I will personally teach you the dance of the dead."

Chapter 15 Bad Moon Rising Leer, Seeing Again is Believing More

"What do we do now Victor." Max asked, bringing Leer's focus back to present day. "If Bobby's dead, meaning daddy got to him, what about the shipment?"

"The shipment is gone, Max." Victor responded. "Let's just do what Sal told us to do. Let's handle tomorrows shipment, make sure it goes without a hitch. It's time to get the boys together."

Max was a little surprised at this. She had imagined that Victor was going to dramatically alter things, possibly including the cancellation or at the very least the postponement of the shipment. Maybe she hadn't made herself clear enough to him about the fact that she was hoping that things would change, that the fighting and killing would stop and that the JumpJuice was at the center of it all. Max checked herself, giving Victor the benefit of the doubt, she thought about the fight at the clubhouse. He had been attacked, yet he only disabled the goons. Sal nearly accused him of being responsible for the theft or loss of the shipment going so far as to question his ability to manage the operation, his capacity to fight for that which belonged to him. Instead of reacting with anger or self-righteousness, Victor chose preservation and diplomacy, letting Sal know where he stood without getting into a pissin' match like the men in her life had become accustomed to. As she granted Victor this moment of understanding she allowed herself to trust in him. "Alright, Victor, I'll get the guys together, how soon?" she asked as she pulled her phone out,  a smile crossing her face as she remembered that which made them late for Sal in the first place.

"Now", he responded as he walked toward the hole to the outside world, its edges still slightly smoldering from the blast.

Chapter 15 Bad Moon Rising Leer, Seeing Again is Believing

Leer knew that Victor was used to being called Mr. Alonso by all but a select few. The fact that goon number two felt it acceptable to address him by his first name meant that he recognized something different in Victor and, judging by the trashing he just received at Victor's hands, it wasn't weakness. Leer was perfectly fine with the idea of people recognizing that Victor was different, it would be only natural for him to have changed on some level. In fact, he was planning on leveraging the event in order to instigate change that he knew was possible. Stepping into the body of someone else in the middle of what could basically be labelled a drug war might normally cause one to want to hide, to blend in, to go along with whatever might be happening without drawing too much attention to one's self. However, Leer had no intention of blending in. He was not afraid of changing things in Victor's life. He planned on it. The moment he remembered tomorrow, he knew what he had to do today. He absolutely believed in change because he had already seen it for himself. His challenge was to foster that change without destroying that which was meant to remain the same. Leer continued getting little memory flashes throughout the rest of the day, each one bringing him closer to the truth, that he had less than a month to live. He was getting very excited. He couldn't wait to tell Blue that they were going to die again but Tommy and Victor didn't exactly hang together. That meant that he had his work cut out for him. Leer had experienced a very similar situation on Earth in 2064 when he was the Prime Minister of Amanada. He knew he was going to be assassinated by a Tea Party activist for allowing the entire population of the Maldives to enter the country with full citizenship after their entire country essentially disappeared into the ocean., claiming that her rights as an Amanadan were being taken away by the immigrants. She killed him by rubbing poison on her baby's cheeks, then, after clawing her way through a crowd of his supporters, held her little bundle of joy out to him for the obligatory political pucker. What was truly comical about that situation is that Leer, knowing that he had to die, had somehow managed to forget where the poison was going to be. His only wish was that he had lived long enough to see the video of himself spattering kisses all over the poor unsuspecting little assassin.

Chapter 15 Bad Moon Rising, Leer sees trouble on the way

Leer knew what to expect, because he had already experienced what was to come. The difficulty with a situation like his was being able to recognize how much of an influence to have on achieving certain favorable outcomes. If he became too assertive, he might tip the scales in either direction, ending up with a different result than that which he knew would occur. His memory of the future was limited to a couple of weeks at best, after all, it had been nearly thirty years since he had said what he was about to tell Max,"Bobby's dead."

"What?" Max replied looking bewildered,"but you just told my father that he is the guy who took the shipment!"

"Exactly," he continued,"it isn't going to take Sal more than five minutes to find Bobby and have him snuffed." Leer knew far more than he was able to tell Max at the moment but he felt confident that letting her in on this much foresight would be harmless especially when he came up with a pretty solid fabrication as to how he knew that Bobby was a goner. "You know, Max, it doesn't take Sal long to get to anybody. He wasn't after Bobby until I said that he did it, now that I have, Bobby is history." Max nodded her head slightly, it was at times like this that she really hated being Sal's daughter. She wondered if she would have been able to live a life free from violence had she been born into a different family, was the stress and guilt from this way of living the cause of her mother's condition, would she end up the same way? "Everything is going to work out fine, Max," Victor said gently as he reached an arm around her.

At that very moment, the two goons who had been on the floor, unwilling to move, unsure of their own condition, got to their feet, brushed off the debris that had landed on them during the explosion and simultaneously realized that whatever Victor had done to them was healed by his own hands. The broken arm and snapped knee were apparently none the worse for wear and because they were already down on the floor for the explosion, they managed to escape any injuries that may have occurred from the blast. After looking themselves over in disbelief, they surveyed one another. They started laughing , hugging each other and patting each other on the back. Feeling slightly uncomfortable when they realized they were behaving like happy children, they quickly chiseled their own features back into place. Uncomfortably they approached Victor, each of them extending a hand for a shake. Victor shook each of their hands as both men apologized for attacking him. Victor simply smiled. As they headed toward the door through which Sal had departed, the larger of the two goons turned back slightly and said, "thanks Victor".

Chapter 15 Bad Moon Rising

That feeling of having been somewhere before is a very hard thing to shake when it hits you. It is particularly hard to shake if you had actually been there before, and not just in the respect that you happen to be standing in the exact same spot where you stood a year ago or the last time you were in town, but the actual fact of existing within the exact same moment as you already had. this is the precise feeling that Leer now was busy experiencing without letting anyone else in the room know it. Fortunately, two of the people in the room were absorbed in their wounds, though remarkably less than one might have imagined given the severity of the injuries they had received at the hands of Victor. Max was in the process of stifling the urge to go for round three with Victor after seeing him move so flawlessly, not only managing Sal's goons but handling Sal himself by barely acknowledging the attack Sal had ordered upon him. Sal was quiet, pensive and absolutely glued to Victor's facial expressions and body language. He was waiting for Victor to explain what he meant when he said that Tommy Levito didn't have the missing JumpJuice. Leer returned Sal's piercing gaze. Instantly, he remembered what was going to happen next.

"Excuse me," Victor said politely as he quickly moved to the far side of the room. There, a full set of armor was displayed complete with a full length shield. He deftly removed the shield from it's mount in the display and just as nimbly changed direction back toward a large double glass door. Victor opened the door with his right hand as he raised the shield with his left precisely as a projectile, the approximate size and weight of a large shot put ricocheted off of the shield. Immediately, he lunged back inside the room, slamming the doors closed as he dove for the floor yelling,"DOWN!" just as an explosion rocked the clubhouse blowing the glass from the doors and separating them from their hinges. The curtains, the rug and a chair near to the doors were on fire. Sal was surprisingly quick to his feet and was extinguishing the flames before they had a chance to spread.

After the smoke had cleared a bit, Max, Sal and Victor surveyed the damage to the outside of the doorway and the face of the building below. The tiny balcony had been blown off except where the supports were strongest, two points where the balcony attached to the outer wall, now clinging to what remained of the narrow floor, the shattered remnants of the guardrail. The facade of the building was blackened and the grounds had a whole the size of an inverted VW Beetle carved out from the blast.

"How did you know?" Max asked Victor as she held him by the hand. Sal's eyes, taking it all in belied an uneasiness, she noticed, though it would be hard to determine the exact cause, the blast or the intimacy.

Leer knew far more than he was going to share anytime in the immediate future. "I had a source, but that's not what's important right now. Sal, it was one of our own," Victor said as he turned back into the room."It's Bobby." Leer paused to get a good look at Sal's reaction, nothing. "But I don't think he's in on this alone. Obviously he didn't take the shipment without help, but that's not what I mean. Someone else, a little smarter, maybe not much, but at least a little, came up with the plan." Leer noticed a little twitch in the corner of Sals lips as he said this, then he finished with, "but don't worry Sal, I'll find him. Then, I'm going to show you what I do to guys who double-cross me. Leave it to me Sal, I'll handle it, I promise." Victor's eyes were focused directly on Sal's as he said this.

"I know you will, Victor," Sal responded, then quickly dismissed both of them saying,"let me know if you need anything from me, anything. And Victor, don't let my little Maxie distract you too much, we've got another shipment rolling out tomorrow, remember." Reaching into his pocket, Sal retrieved a small handful of peanuts." Let's not lose two of them." With a single flick he tossed two nuts from their shell, into the air and caught them in his mouth as he approached the door. He did not look back.

Chapter 15 Bad Moon Risin'

Farb Almighty, seer of all things, many people believed that the face in the moon was the face of Farb himself, keeping a watchful eye over them as they slept. Despite mountains of scientific evidence to the contrary, the ultra-devout clung to the notion with the intensity of a free-climbers crimp. For Leer, always mindful of the mission, each story, every individual perspective was a clue. As he surveyed the landscape he didn't see the planet, the ground, the water, the trees, fields or mountains, he saw memories, parallels to memories, doorways to new sections in the labyrinth of "All That Is".

Chapter 14 Anna Marie, Teacher, Interpreter, Muse, Dancer

The moment Blue had finished the energy painting, Anna Marie was there. He half-suspected that she was sitting behind a bush the whole time, just waiting for him to clean his brushes. She hadn't been, she was just that in tune with him. It was an ability she had developed over the years, an ability she could exercise with just about everybody. She just happened to be even better at it with Blue. She leaned in close, directly over the painting and began swirling her arms around like the action she saw depicted in the brushstrokes, her smile was joyful and at the same time purposeful as if she was creating happiness with her movement and intent. Blue, placing the clean brushes on the table before him, sat and watched Anna Marie. He became immediately caught up in her dance, his head and shoulders swaying back and forth as if she was a snake charmer and he the snake. But this was not a dance of control. He wasn't forced into any particular sort of movement, no count to follow, no mark to hit, no choreography, no right, no wrong, pure happiness.

His eyes were closed. He felt extremely peaceful while at the same time excited. Then Blue heard a sound he thought he would never hear, laughter. Laughter coming from someone other than himself. The only other person there was Anna Marie. He opened his eyes to see if Sansaa had returned or maybe another woman from the village. He knew before he saw her that this laugh had to be Anna Marie's, so sweet, and lush. Yes, he thought to himself, lush. Blue had never heard of laughter being described as lush before and he wasn't sure why he was so focused on the concept at the moment, but he was and not without due cause. If you were asked to define a person's laugh, you may start with adjectives like loud, shrill, echoing, mighty, mousy, nasally, maybe even pleasant, joyous, jubilant or intoxicating, but none of those would describe Anna Marie's laugh. It surrounded Blue in a bubble of pleasure, then filled that bubble completely with happiness that was palpable, soaking him with perfect rain and warming him with blissful sunshine, lush. Blue was so overwhelmed with the sound of her laugh that he completely failed to recognize that he was no longer sitting at the table.

He was, in fact, sitting in the exact spot in the hut belonging to Mojahdii where he had been sitting with Anna Marie shortly after they were introduced to one another. Anna Marie sat directly across from him laying out the small bundle of freshly picked herbs, leaves and grasses as well as the flower, in precisely the same design that she had laid them out in before, this time Blue noticed and recognized the design. It was the same shape as the energy, represented by swirling lines orbiting a bright, seemingly empty center. Anna Marie smiled at Tommy then took his hand in hers. In his palm she placed the single blossom of a flower. It was still the most brilliant blue flower he had ever seen. Anna Marie gently curled his fingertips around the blossom and held his hand between both of hers as she bowed sweetly to him, then slowly opened his curled fingers and the flower was gone. She smiled again, then winked and closed his hand again. Slowly, she opened his fingers once again, inside were two identical brilliant blue blossoms. A rush of pure energy shivered its way through Blue's entire body as he saw the blossoms, his painting in between their elbows, as he and Anna Marie sat across from one another at the table once again.