My apologies for the lateness of this one. I had a successful webinar this afternoon presenting the Hidden Life Conference to a few interested pastors and I completely forgot to send this off.
So without further ado,
The Stolen Man: Law of the Land, Episode 3-2
(S.M. Table of Contents)
“What time is it?”
You are leaning heavily against Dan.
“What is your obsession with time?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I just feel…lost..somehow.”
“lost?”
“Yeah, It’s like… weren’t we just at the coffee shop? Now we’re here.”
“We left the coffee shop. Remember the taxi?”
“No”
“No?”
“No”
“Troy, we talked the whole way here. You really remember none of it?”
“No and it’s more than that. I feel…adrift. It’s like I can’t quite stand in place I think if I just knew what time it was maybe I’d be anchored.”
“It’s not nonsense, Troy.”
“What?”
“You said we should consider the possibility it means nothing. It doesn’t mean nothing. I mean, it’s something much weirder. The Diamond Machine, that’s what you called it right?”
“Did I? I thought you…”
“Six and Seven have used it before.”
“For Interrogation?”
“That was more your thing.“
“My thing?”
“Later. This was something else. Something that changes all the rules. Something about erasing lives.”
“Erasing memories, you mean. Like me.”
“They don’t just change memories they completely rewrite them, creating whole new lives, new stories. Stealing lives.”
“Like Helen, making her think I’m her husband.”
“Again, more than that. It’s like they actually rebuild these lives from the bottom up. What if they are not just rewriting the memories of the history, but the history itself.”
“That’s impossible, what are you talking about.”
“Don’t be annoyed, perhaps I’m just paranoid, but I’ve been reeling with the strangest feeling, that I remember a past that didn’t last. the feelings persist, that I don’t quite exist.”
“You’re rhyming again, and not making much sense either.”
“S-S-S-Sorry.”
The world turns over again, but briefly and you are still standing outside, only having moved a few feet apparently. Dan is talking, apparently in the middle of a sentence, “Going to when Troy? That’s the question. It’s Helen Troy, you’ve got to find….”
The world flips again, and you are leaning against a wall. You are inside now and the room looks familiar. And that person over by the bureau, putting makeup on, and there’s a shape in the bed. A familiar shape. You feel ill. Helen (for it is indeed Helen) speaks without looking away from the mirror. You’re not sure if she’s speaking to you or the figure in the bed.
“Troy, come on! You’re going to be late. We can’t afford another sick day. You know that.”