CHAPTER 20
“Not all truth can be perceived by our eyes,” Javier replied.
Oz frowned. “Tell me what happened to you,” he ordered Rick.
Rick looked to Javier for guidance.
Javier nodded for him to comply; his expression serious. “Tell him everything.”
He let out a long breath, trying to figure out where to start. “I, well... this will sound crazy, but it felt like I experienced another... life.”
“What?” Oz asked incredulously. “What does that even mean? And how are you not even injured?”
Rick started to get an inclination of where Javier was going with this. He figured he was laying some kind of a trap for Oz. Hoping he would become so enamored with the phenomenon that maybe he’d let his guard down.
Clever idea, Javier, Rick thought. And maybe their only option.
Rick shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you, man, I don’t have those answers,” he said. “All I know is that I saw my own life, or rather it was more like I lived it, but it turned out a whole lot differently than this one. Better in a lot of ways. It was incredible.”
Diego’s mouth dropped open, listening to his story. He made the sign of the cross.
“You were only unconscious for a few moments,” Oz said, narrowing his eyes.
Rick looked to Javier, who again nodded for him to continue.
“It seemed like a lifetime,” Rick replied, shrugging his shoulders.
Oz frowned. He shook his head. “I still don’t understand. Tell me the truth.”
“I am,” Rick insisted. “I know it sounds crazy.”
Sofia watched Rick as he gave his explanation. He seemed completely sincere. She couldn’t detect any deception in his voice or his facial expressions, as utterly bizarre as his explanation sounded. She didn’t know what to make of this.
“What do you think is going on?” Luis whispered to his sister. He was finding the situation frightening. Intriguing, but frightening.
She shook her head. “Let’s just listen.”
“Tell me how you survived a gunshot wound,” Oz asked forcefully, his eyes narrowing.
Rick looked down and touched his chest. “That’s right, you did try to kill me, didn’t you?” He was as shocked as anyone. But this wasn’t the time to deal with the existential questions this experience posed. He looked back at Oz.
“No. I tried to kill him,” Oz said, waving his gun in Luis’ direction. “You just got in the way, trying to play hero.”
Rick stared him down. “I’m still standing here, aren’t I?”
Oz was growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of answers and clarity. They were playing games with him and he’d had it.
He pointed his gun at Javier, his anger rising. “Tell me now how he survived or I will kill you. Or at least try to. I don’t know if these tablets will protect you, too, but something tells me you’re not going to want to try and prove me wrong on this.” He looked over at Mari, Carlos, and Juan. “Besides, I’ll just work my way through your friends until someone gives me an explanation for this.” He looked back to Javier. “I know you know, Shuar.”
Javier studied the man’s face. He made a choice. The one he knew he was going to have to make. He was going to tell him the truth.
“When Rick tried to save Luis,” Javier spoke, “his hand bumped the tablet. From what he says, on a specific symbol, just before you shot him. When he made contact with the symbol, he was temporarily protected by it in a way.”
“How?” Oz asked. “How exactly does that work?”
“In a sense,” he answered, “he was in two places at once.”
Oz listened, trying to make sense of what he was being told. “Go on.”
“If you had shot him before he touched that symbol,” Javier said, “he would surely be dead.”
Oz shook his head. “But how was he in two places at once? He didn’t leave this cavern. We all saw him. He was right there.”
Javier took a moment to frame his thoughts so that this man would understand. “There is much about life, our life force energy that is yet to be understood.”
Oz waited for him to continue.
“Our people, we believe how it works is that he left this plane of existence to travel to another, to experience another life. His physical body stayed here. We could see him. But Rick, his person, his soul, his life force, traveled elsewhere.”
Javier knew that his friends were not going to be happy he was sharing this sacred knowledge. He just hoped they knew him well enough to trust in his judgement.
“Then why didn’t he die just from that?” Oz asked, thinking the question was obvious.
“Because our lives, our existence,” Javier said, holding his arms out, “is more than the sum of the parts we can see with the physical eye. He did not die, because the experience does not require that. The mind is powerful. There are many things we are capable of, that we simply do not know.”
That last comment was like catnip to Oz. He was salivating over the mystery that was presenting itself to him. This could be the greatest discovery mankind had ever known. And it was going to be his, to do with as he pleased.
They all waited silently for Oz to make his next move.
Oz was trying to grasp the enormity of this revelation and all of its ramifications. He looked at his dead operative, lying on the cavern floor. He thought of the other one who’d run screaming, ablaze, from the cavern. Surely dead as well.
“Explain what happened to my men. Why were they killed? This metal library... what did it do to them?”
Good question, Rick thought, also wanting to know the answer.
Javier
