Gather the Sentient (19 page)

CHAPTER

33

LANYING

Thursday, September 29

Shanghai

Lanying stared blankly at the textbook in her lap.  She blinked in an attempt to refocus the words on the page, but it was no use.  She was far too preoccupied with the unexpected turn her life had recently taken to concentrate on her studies, so instead of forcing the issue, she turned off the bedside lamp and settled in beneath the crisp cotton sheets.

A moment later she switched on the light again and leaned over the edge of her bed to fish for the wooden box hidden beneath the mattress.  In the days since her grandfather had given it to her, trusting her with what he described as his most cherished possession, she’d been over the contents a dozen times, reading and rereading each scrap of information.  There were fading Polaroids of inscriptions carved into ancient ruins in Tibet.  There were charcoal rubbings of symbols from temple walls in Central America, written in a language she couldn’t begin to comprehend.  There was a leather-bound journal, worn from overuse, filled with notes about the many civilizations throughout history with knowledge of the Sevens Prophecy.

As she flipped idly through the journal, she was struck by the juxtaposition between contemporary knowledge of the prophecy as compared to its obvious pervasiveness throughout history.  For truly, until Mia and Thomas shared what they knew, she’d been completely unaware.  Yet it was clear from the stack of artifacts within the box, for thousands of years, devout believers from every continent stood in watchful anticipation of the ancient prediction.  Had it simply been forgotten over time or had it been systematically eliminated from the world’s collective consciousness?

The corner of a yellowing sheet of newsprint at the bottom of the box caught her attention, and she slipped it out from beneath the other artifacts.  She began unfolding, taking special care not to cause any tears, and once it was completely unfurled a single line of text was revealed, written in a strange symbolic script.  Underneath was a translation in Chinese characters – “Seven light to save the earth. Seven dark to destroy it.”  Below that was the word ‘Bantu’ written in her grandfather’s familiar handwriting.

Upon reading these words, Lanying felt the familiar pull of what her grandfather called her ‘distant visions.’  In an instant, she was no longer in her bedroom, safely in Shanghai.  Instead, her mind was spirited away to some unknown, remote location, and before her sat a man on a grass mat at the edge of a primitive hut.  Spread around him were photographs of hundreds of men and women, all African, and all without hands.  It was unclear as to whether they were born without hands or if they’d been removed later on for some reason, but either way, the images were horrifying.  She watched as he held one picture after another, closing his eyes as if surrendering to their unseen power.  He remained motionless during most of what appeared to be some sort of ritual, twitching only slightly from time to time, a scowl crossing his brow.

His skin was smooth, the darkest brown she’d ever seen, and she wished in that moment she had the power to reach out and touch his cheek.  She was certain it would feel like satin if she could.  His hair was clipped short, almost to the scalp, and in contrast to the native looking sarong draped around his hips, a pair of thick, horn-rimmed glasses adorned his face.

Coming out of his trance-like state, he blinked repeatedly and then bowed his head, as if to recover from something.  After a moment, he pulled a tablet out from beneath the woven mat and powered it on.  His fingers flew across the screen, searching, and then finally he began to type.  Lanying strained to see the words on the screen but the text was blurry and unreadable.  She watched him from within the vision for several more minutes until slowly, the image started to retreat.

The following afternoon, as she sat in her Advanced Bariatrics seminar, she was yanked away, without warning, back to the African jungle.  Initially concerned about missing important information from the day’s lecture, she quickly reconsidered when she realized the importance of the scene she’d been called to witness.

The man from the first vision was there, dressed now in a filthy t-shirt with a logo for World Vision emblazoned across the back.  He sat among a circle of women and infants, as well as boys and other men, most of whom looked to be between the ages of 12 to 40, and on the ground in the center of their group was a large scale model of what she assumed was the surrounding area.  There was a highly forested section and beside that numerous fields displayed with different crops.  By the way he slid the sections around and moved them in and out of the display, it was clear he was explaining crop rotation.  She glanced away from the group and saw that just beyond the small clustering of thatched roof huts, there was a makeshift granary, where teenage girls worked to load baskets of maize onto a World Vision delivery truck.

As abruptly as she’d been pulled into the vision, she was dismayed to discover being returned to her class with the same degree of haste.  Thrown slightly off-kilter, she blinked several times to reorient herself to her surroundings, from the blazing African sun into the dim classroom.  Her professor was pontificating about the pros and cons of LAP band surgery, and Lanying immediately tuned out.  The last thing she wanted to think about was people who had access to so much food they needed operations to keep themselves from eating, especially having just witnessed people living in a place known for extreme bouts of famine.  Without the slightest hesitation, she gathered her belongings and slipped unnoticed out the back of the lecture hall.

Most of the visions she’d experienced during her life had been benign.  Of people driving to work, grocery shopping, watching television.  And the truth was, she hadn’t been particularly inclined to think very much about the meaningless visions peppering her existence.  She’d mollified herself about remaining at a distance, uninvolved, because what went on in other people’s lives simply wasn’t her business.  However, after meeting Thomas in real life, outside the visions she’d observed him through for so long, she now realized she could no longer ignore the truth.

She was part of the Sevens Prophecy.

She was chosen to save the world.

And therefore, it stood to reason that the visions she was having of the man in Africa were important.  She was sure of it.

She headed to the closest Wi-Fi area on campus and booted up her laptop, Googling World Vision from her phone.  Within moments she learned they were an agency dedicated to ‘working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.’  She began skimming their website, searching through hundreds of active development projects across dozens of countries in Africa when she spotted a photograph of the man from her vision.

His name was Salomon Maunb, and he was a junior agricultural specialist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Immediately, she searched for information about the country, having little knowledge of its location on the map, much less its history or current status, and the first image on the screen turned her stomach.  Dozens and dozens of men, women, and children frowning into the camera, all without any hands, exactly like the photographs she’d witnessed Salomon inspecting in her first vision. 
What had Salomon been doing with the pictures?
she thought. 
And what in the world happened to the Congolese?

Discovering the truth behind the mutilated natives was the easier of the two inquiries.  Two clicks later, the answer was revealed by an online encyclopedia page describing the atrocities committed by King Leopold II of Belgium against the Congolese during his reign at the turn of the nineteenth century.  After claiming much of the land in the Congo for himself, Leopold used mercenaries to exploit forced labor from the native population, harvesting and processing rubber.  The king went on to amass a great fortune at the expense of nearly ten million Congolese lives.  Sadly, if the Congolese were unable to meet their daily rubber quota, the punishment was death; although many Congolese children and wives whose fathers and husbands did not meet their quotas also paid a severe penalty by having their hands removed.

Upon reading all of this, Lanying was appalled and overwhelmed by the brutality Salomon’s ancestors endured and immediately wondered to what degree Salomon was motivated by this information.  Did it make him angry?  Sad?  Emboldened?  It also bothered her that she’d lived her entire life without knowing anything about this narrative of world history, causing her to speculate about other gaps in her knowledge base.  Her curiosity sparked, she dove deeper into her search, reading more about Leopold’s reign of terror and the current state of the Democratic Republic of Congo.  And then, an hour into her search, she stumbled across
Heart of Darkness,
Joseph Conrad’s seminal call-to-arms against the Dutch occupation and downloaded it immediately.

She was three-quarters of the way through the novella, still sitting in the same Wi-Fi station in the university’s library when her phone buzzed in her pocket.  She pulled it out and saw that Thomas was attempting to Skype.  Mindful of the library’s strict no calls policy, she dashed into the nearest restroom, leaving her backpack and laptop behind.

As soon as the restroom door closed safely behind her, she answered the call.  “Hello!” she said, waving enthusiastically at the screen with her free hand.

“Hi,” he grinned back.  “It’s good to see you.”

“You too.”  She was surprised by the sense of relief she felt at seeing his face.  Since leaving the United States she’d been plagued by the feeling that her trip there had been a dream and that Mia and Thomas didn’t actually exist outside her own mind.  There’d been several text messages sent between them, but visual confirmation of his existence sparked renewed confidence in her path.

“Listen,” he began, “I don’t want to keep you long because I’m sure you’re busy and it’s really late here in Baltimore, but I wanted to let you know Mia and I may have found another psychic from the prophecy.”

“That’s terrific news!”

“I know.  We’re still researching specifics about her, but her birthday is a match and she’s part of this psychic registry we’ve been working from.  We have no idea whether she’s light or dark, but we’re working on finding out.”  He paused.  “Any news from your end?”

She thought of the hours she’d wasted reading about the Congo and
Heart of Darkness
and felt a pang of regret, until she remembered her grandfather’s warnings about the prophecy.  “Something quite strange, actually,” she told him.  “As it turns out, my grandfather, who I thought was simply an archivist at the Second Historical Archives of China in Nanjing, worked secretly as a historical theologian prior to his retirement.  Thomas, he knows about the prophecy.  He believes in the prophecy.  And the weirdest part is, he suspected for many years I was part of it.”

He was silent for a moment and she saw the awed expression on his face.  “What does he know?”

“A lot.  He gave me a box of old relics and notes from his research.  I’ve been trying to go through it…”  She stopped then, the guilt of her misdirected attention weighing heavily, until she suddenly remembered her first vision of Salomon occurred as she was going through the box. 
Was it possible?
she thought.

“Thomas, I think I may have found another psychic as well.”

His eyes widened in disbelief.  “You’re kidding.”

She was piecing it all together quickly in her own mind – the scrap of paper written in Bantu and Salomon’s trance-like appearance while holding the photographs of the handless Congolese.  It wasn’t impossible for him to be one of them.  He even appeared to be about the right age.  And if the reason her ability had shown her Thomas was because he was part of the prophecy, perhaps that’s why it was showing her Salomon as well.

“Remember when I told you I had visions of you long before actually meeting you in real life?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, I believe it might be happening again.  Now that I’ve made an actual, physical connection with you, I believe my focus may have now shifted to another member of the prophecy.  Since returning from the United States, I’ve had several visions of an African man named Salomon working in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  I didn’t know all of that at first, of course, but it didn’t take long to uncover with a little online research.”