the esoteric premises she was proffering. So it was perplexing that, in spite
of my persistent prodding, she was unwilling to disclose her full plot.
By evening‘s end, I knew only that her story involved a rescue
mission of such massive proportion and intricate design that prospective
rescuers had to be stealthily recruited, and arduously indoctrinated to its
methods, before teachers revealed the specifics of the mission. Without
this systematic preparation, she explained apologetically, the quest would
sound like pure fantasy, and willing participants would have to be
delusional. In part, this was why volunteers were not we lcome.
Using my frustration like a pole dancer, Bonnie also managed to
cajole me into role-playing a trainee‘s development: describing a student‘s
trials, she said, was a critical element her story was missing. I blithely
assumed this was because I could articulate, and impregnably justify my
jaded views, and that she understood her story needed a grim counterpoint
to the Disney- like premises she had alluded to all evening.
For the next four months, we worked closely and occasionally
combatively discussing the supernatural precepts her characters had to
study, still without revealing the mission‘s ultimate target. During this
time, and often in the teacher‘s detached role, she kept me at bay like a
bemused fox playing with a myopic rabbit.
For the most part, I managed to contain my dissatisfaction over both
circumstances, until she began using my beliefs as examples of why the
rescue mission was necessary, and I would have walked away were it not
for a mitigating factor. I had begun having unusual cognitive experiences,
as she said I would, from undergoing her screenplay character‘s practical
and metaphysical lessons.
Although these interesting psychological interludes did not balance
against what I viewed as unwarranted assaults on my character, they did
reduce my overt derision to less disrespectful denials. In turn, my relative
acceptance of her opinions caused me to more readily embrace the laye red
premises she was clearly developing to justify outright acts of magic in her
story—then she made a claim too ridiculous to contemplate, even in jest.
Bonnie said her story was true, that an ancient teaching spirit had
contacted her to say that mankind has reached an evolutionary cul-de-sac.
This was the end time—the biblical Second Coming—both terms being
misnomers. The ancient spirit—K ha- li—told her that our biblical
characters had been here on many occasions, and that it was the end of the
world "cycle" in which we were now repeating historical lessons
unlearned. We were on the cusp of a universal intervention in our ways,
and our return to sanity would begin by awakening masterful emissaries to
