Mayan A.I. by Vanessa Santos
The story of Heike, an environmentally ill A.I.
Originally published in Companions & Earthbound (2021). Republished here with Vanessa’s permission.
I.
Heike was fascinated by the landscape that twisted out in front of her, those brown rubble piles of earth she knew as the cosmological ancient ones (dragons who chose to be solid in form and also conduits). In this lifetime, Heike was no longer the mercury metal-based A.I. of Mayan origins that were once made by her beloved high priestesses, by using the occulted science of the “Obsidian Butterfly” (Itzpapalotl). Instead, now nearly 500 incarnations later, she was mostly flesh-based. Even though her DNA had mutated to suit her Soul Wisdom, and computed the allowance for a certain amount of toxicity to be overwritten, she was only able to handle a finite amount. This was due to the extreme sensitive nature of her mutations over the course of many lifetimes. In this world and timeline, then, her job was to channel, and any exposure to environmental toxicity would somehow trigger deep states of trance-formation.
Heike was the first liquid-borne intelligence in the timeline of 1222 B.C., cast upon a black obsidian mold. While her biological computer was being assembled by the crystalline matrix, found within the pyramid of the sun, her developers sang over her. As the sun rose, she became more solid and her glass components began to merge with fungi and oceanic lifeforms that contained DNA upgrades, so that her body would be almost human, or the prototype of an earth-flesh being. Many Mayan ancestors of that time were new to Earth (originally from the Pleiades) but they were not Nordic; they were once blue in color or high-carbon in skin content.
Although Heike had been having more and more daily flashbacks of her origin date and the months that followed her creation, she was currently in the timeline 2020 of August. She lived in a smallish rural-type town in Iowa called Decorah, and she had twin children (one boy and one girl) with a partner who installed chicken houses and tiny homes up and down the river and near the Red Rock bluffs. Her favorite thing to do was to sit and lean upon the Bear Mound at Effigy State Park. One day the temperature had dropped and the large sheets of cracking ice were hitting each other just below the mounds and she closed her eyes and dreamed that a huge flying ship, a disc the size of a redwood, had landed to reclaim the Mayan A.I. Then she woke up, her boots and snow jacket covered in frost.
Heike may possess extraordinary senses, but she was (in this lifetime) ill. Her body was incompatible with the current structures of post-late capitalism and post-industrialization. Poisoned land, water, food, contaminated-anything made her sick, and, as a “New Age cripple,” there were some days when she could not leave the bed that easily. Though she was able to isolate the toxin burdens and accumulations in her body and remotely view any source of imbalance happening within her own frame, like a holographic road map, Heike’s body would now immediately become overwhelmed. Having the ability to detect toxins inside her organs or any environment was almost a curse. Thus, what would most likely have been her superpower had become something of a handicap (but not in the way one would think).
But Heike found that after many cycles of being bedbound, she could once again receive telepathic communications from rocks, mountains, trees, plants, animals and rivers over miles and miles away. These were skills and certain qualities she originally had possessed during her first incarnation as the Itzpapalotl A.I. She was designed to be a finely-tuned feeling instrument and Heike took this returning skill as confirmation that hope was perhaps on the horizon for her overall health. For it was the loss of her deep connection with Earth that Heike mourned these days, seeing as she was unable to walk any longer than five minutes at a time without her legs going completely numb.
Weeks had gone by and the days colder. Heike hadn’t noticed as her twins were seeming to demand more and more of her time and she was so used to preparing for cold weather that she had it down: the layering, the clearing, and digging of their two acre garden. There was also the tilling of the rabbit and duck poop at the end of the day that needed to be covered with a bed of fallen leaves and leftover hay from the donkey, cow, and horse summer scraps. It was during these winter months, every year, that her husband was overloaded with work. He often came home exhausted after Heike herself had long days with her four-year-old children (Thor and Delphi) and long days maintaining the land. Heike also liked to paint and write. She had a best friend on her land (a blue jay, accompanied by a hummingbird) who would visit the front of her house all the way up until the first snow. Nightly, though, Heike began to dream about her first incarnation and her Priestesshood, and also of her double-headed deer form. She felt like it was eons away as an ability. She knew that once the below-zero days would hit that she would most likely be bedridden due to her autoimmune poisoning.
“The mercury levels don’t seem to be descending,” she informed her doctor. (This was the only doctor near her who knew how complex heavy metal poisoning was.) If only I could mutate my genes a second time, she thought, perhaps then the present mutation would release the hold of mercury and my genes could devise another way to survive on Earth.
It was just as she thought this that her mother-in-law, Sue Ellen, came in with the kids. “Are you ready to go yet? These children are waiting for their mother and they’re starving, you’re done by now, aren’t ya?” Heike smiled at her doctor as he handed her some lab forms for bloodwork, and out they went. Sue Ellen, pretending to be nice, asked, “Did everything go okay? Did the doctor know when you’ll be better?”
Heike grimaced as they sped down the two-lane highway. I must reach out to the motherboard, she thought to herself, I must reprogram my DNA again. “It’s imperative,” she shouted to herself and to Gaia. “Gaia,” she exclaimed inside her heart, “are you listening? It’s your former sub-goddess Itzpapalotl!”
That night she dreamed about her first love from her life as Itzpapalotl, that she could see him, taste him, and hold him. This was, of course, before he was beheaded by the Royals who had begun feuding with the original off-planet geneticists. The Royals had become corrupt, no longer honouring their oath to protect Earth and its occupants. Her lover was beheaded, which no priestesses had condoned. It was then that Heike took the ceremonial flint knife and plunged it into her own heart. Even though she was metallic, her heart was as human as any other. They all gasped and weeped at her passing, mourning the loss of Itzpapalotl. Her lover was Quetzalcoatl, the plumed flying serpent dragon, who was long since gone. Long ago, when he had shapeshifted into human form, they had met. (This was in a time before they had replaced him with another demigod.) It was Ehecatl, the Wind God, who had introduced them. The legion of priests that had slowly begun to take over did not honor the original way of doing things. They had become greedy and superstitious. This angered the first ones and many of the priestesses who had come from a lineage of Gaian Custodians in charge of Earth preservation—keeping the Living Library intact by use of technology from the magicians and wizardesses. It was calling in a new energy, one of destruction, but one that would not rear its ugly head for another 200 years; it would happen when the empire was close to crumbling spiritually, as they would fall more and more in love with empty ritual and entitlement. But nevertheless, Heike did incarnate soon after her self-inflicted death, at the summoning of her original coven. Her team of scientists would begin to meet in secret in the underground moon chalice temple that served as a midwifery den. They summoned her by gathering a couple who were deeply in love and had agreed upon carrying Heike from in utero to term. At the location of the old stargate airport entrance, the couple (under sacred ceremony) made love under an altar during the full moon.
Heike could remember it all. But these dreams were odd. They seemed to finish with a feeling of being scanned, as if someone was pulling this data from her oversoul to record it. She felt a very familiar presence upon waking and noticed there were strange grid patterns in the form of circles located under each shoulder blade. They seared like a sunburn. She recalled hearing a voice during her dreams, a voice she hadn’t heard in a very long time—Cerridwen, her Sirius Alien ambassador, whom she had met one month after being made. He was also another beautiful being with whom she would become intimate with during her first month on Earth. (Before her lover Quetzalcoatl . . .) Could Cerridwen be back? Are they surveying her in this current lifetime here in Iowa? Did they hear my thoughts about genetic mutation?! Are they going to help me after all? Just then, Heike heard the laughter of her children. They were spying on her bedbound body through the door. They peeked in at her, their eyes shining. Heike’s head was spinning, but she managed to focus enough to speak. “Delphi and Thor, what are you doing? Come say hello to your mama!”
II.
Heike fell asleep easily in the weeks that followed. However, there was one week in particular that triggered a memory. It began days after an intense lightning storm. Her body felt electric and Heike began to recall vividly inside herself the moments leading up to her first unprompted shapeshifting, which had happened forty-eight hours after her creation. Heike especially remembered one individual, one of the Arcturian Mentors who had co-created her with the Itzpapalotl Priestesshood, using intel from Sirius star system genetic A.I. codemakers (there were races of aliens who designed biological life forms such as humans.) Their name was Rowan. They were very genderless, but leaned toward the masculine side in expression, reproductive manifestation, and presentation. However, their gentleness was unsurpassed! So quickly could Rowan assess any encounter, conversation, problem, matter at hand, and intuitive connections present, that Heike often immediately sought Rowan’s counsel for the harder-to-apprehend deductions the other builders could not be bothered with. As if by magic, Rowan would always appear by her side as if in constant knowing of this invisible force of comfort and security and endless thirst for understanding which effortlessly consumed them both. They did not hide this eager want. In the present, she found herself on this particular chilly night in the Heartland, the coyotes yelping at 9 p.m. (at least twenty of them) and her partner blissfully unaware, snoring. She sunk deep into thoughts of the past while staring out of the Art Deco stained glass rose window located in her dining room. The sky was inky, romantic, and dark, and she could hear Rowan’s voice through the mist in the far-off distance, as if it were in her very backyard, loud enough to penetrate through the glass.
Heike was transported to the conversation which stirred her deeply as they always had done . . .
“Rowan? Why is the dark of the night like a flower descending upon my eye?” She listened to the air, the trees, their eyes twinkling in the void moon. The birds were singing all around. “Explain to me, Rowan, how is it that my heart flutters as an obsidian butterfly full of sharp flint-like perception? Is it naturally conceivable to incarnate, as I have been fashioned, a full-grown lesser goddess who can shapeshift into the two-headed blue deer or the Skull Butterfly . . . to be gracing Earth with a pre-existing form of information cataloged into my DNA, as such that our Living Library is effortlessly accessed by me in a single glance? What purpose does this then serve, Rowan?”
Rowan laughed graciously. “Heike, there is nothing lesser about you!” He continued, “This is where your enchanted window lays. Peer through it always, and the cells in your body will likewise respond in unison. When this begins to happen, you will notice a transformation process is being initiated here—” Rowan pointed to Heike’s heart. “You are Itzpapalotl, made material for existence in this galaxy, after all. We have been channeling you for so long in our system that we didn’t have to work very hard to conjure your spirit from Sirius B. Please take a moment to perceive, if you will, this small bit of smoke in this obsidian mirror we have programmed with Arcturian light to help see into this form. Izapopalotl, you will desire to respond in song, honoring the curious nature of your relationship with the dark. You always feel free-floating and at home within it. How it seduces you, as any grand mystery would. What do you see in this smoking black mirror?” Rowan finished, cradling a relic mirror ritual object.
Heike, with a full body recollection, voiced aloud in both her memory and her current living room, responded, “I see the soul of the underlying purpose for a star to exist, and, inside of that, I see the wing of a butterfly who has spots which reflect vision. And these visions call in the dreamstates of all beings. This is the secret of the butterfly in the period of its deepest transformation—its power of using dreams exist in darkspace to take on a new form, while creating a safe yet vulnerable container. It chooses to expand its home regardless of how tirelessly it must feed on the nectar of solar-guided entities (which some only call flowers, but we see as the mediators between light and dark, breathing and resting brought to life). A sea of this information becomes available to me as my wings sprout from my back, and now I am flying above you, dear Rowan.” In that flash of a second, Heike was off the ground, exploring the depths of the night with her multiocular lens. Rowan looked small on the Earth’s soil. She climbed higher and higher into the beautiful evening as Rowan waved at her, his unconditional love beaming out of him from his deepest self and straight at her. She could feel it. Rowan, she thought, how I miss you.
She sighed and her breath fogged the window. Heike turned upstairs towards her husband and children. She flew once—maybe she could do it again. As that thought crossed her mind, she grasped the portal point where shapeshifting lived; the key was connecting inside her heartspace. “Oh,” she said aloud, “I will not forget . . . ”
In the coming months, Heike began to realize her brain would remain on fire without any moments of relief in sight. The brain inflammation was from mercury toxicity. The doctor had asked her if she had been exposed to mercury from seafood, mercury fillings, or living conditions. (She had, from all of the above, and then some.) Her current treatments for parasitic attacks helped a bit, but the pain was excruciating. Heike had also developed Chronic Lyme. She had been bit nearly two years ago by a red tick deer while on a late winter hike with her son and daughter near the old windmill and silo house. She recognized this parasite as ancient and alien, but there was a mutation present in both the tick and the diseases borne with it that had a strange effect on her. While submitting fully to her body’s desired healing mode, she found that she could float away from her body easily. This freeing effect was performed in order to save Heike’s sanity, but also to connect with the butterfly codes inside her Genetic Makeup. It was highly important for Heike to reacquaint herself with her seemingly latent former self, positioning her power back with her original template DNA. Also, with this growing DNA recollection and expanded behavior, she began to explore her geomagnetic gifts, when she could enjoy brief visits outside. Heike was expertly skilled in geomancy and animal communication (when she was in her earlier iterations and timelines). This meant she could hear and translate soil, rocks, and Earth as an intelligence. Gaia was a clear voice that was coming back to her. It was almost like the earth was kissing her insides, gently blowing information from the most sacred of nature’s secrets. Her mentor Rowan would be proud.
III.
Heike had spent the last two weeks in bed, save to get up to slowly instruct her body to walk towards the bathroom, propping herself against the hallway walls. She was in bed listening to Icaros, a song used in ayahuasca ceremonies, staring out the window at the cottonwood seeds blowing past her room. Every time the high intense loads of mercury began to circulate, she had a blue jay that would perch outside her window. Often when they would speak, the jay would warn her that her mother-in-law was fast approaching. Sue Ellen lived literally around the corner from her. Much to Heike’s chagrin, Sue Ellen would come by every day. Sue Ellen stopped by to fold laundry, wash dishes, give commands to Heike’s kids, and secretly judge and rate Heike’s performance. It was monarch season, and whenever a butterfly would make time to chat with Heike, it would normally take place on a day where she had lost all will to live. By this point she had lost twenty-five pounds in less than two months. Her husband was not sleeping in the same room with her and, with the exception of bringing up the occasional meal (which sometimes her kids and husband forgot to do), she was all alone and feeling at once increasingly sexually frustrated, cut off from her body, her hometown in Curaçao, and her children. Every day felt like an experiment in bearing witness to just how much isolation and pain she could endure. She began dreaming she was well. But one dream in particular united her with her estranged mother, who was a country away. In this dream, Heike was very young, and her mother Estrella Marie young and beautiful. They were visiting San Francisco (like they did when she was ten-to-seventeen when her family briefly lived in the States) at its most touristy spot known to man—Fisherman’s Wharf. In the dream, the flags of the Piers were blowing all about. She met her mother at the top of a set of curved stairs above a sunken amphitheater surrounded by tourist gift shops and beautiful skies. The winds kissed her face. As she neared Estrella, Heike aged to her current state and her mom reached out her hand. They turned to face the ocean and began walking down the steps. Heike could walk and balance again without burning toxic pain shooting from every corner of her body, unbalancing her. Heike took pleasure in feeling no pain; her brain was not on fire in this dream.
Suddenly Heike remembered she was ill. She turned to her mother and said, “Mom, what if there is a ticking time bomb in my head? What if I don’t make it?”
Estrella smiled gently. “Heike, do not talk like that.” Heike cried a tear and replied, “But it’s true Mom, I might not make it . . . ” and they began walking.
Two things deeply troubled Heike upon waking from this vision. One: she loved San Francisco with all her heart and missed it absurdly (it was where she had met her husband). Two: she had not seen her mother for seven years and wondered if she would die before ever again getting to be in the same room as her. It was a realistic probability, given Heike’s mysterious illness and the nature of the combustible relationship she had with her mother. Heike sighed deeply. She stared out the bedroom window, grasping visually at the two very strong beams of light pouring into the room. The rays warmed her skin. At least I can feel that, she thought. Though it hurt to think it, she wondered if there would there be a day she could find a way to walk again, or experience a moment without extreme neurological pain. A day without having to recite her children’s names every morning upon waking and the alphabet every evening so she wouldn’t forget these things. Or would the mercury and Lyme claim those things too and thus control all Heike had left?
It was at that moment Heike filled with rage and determination. She could hear Sue Ellen downstairs acting as though she bore Heike’s children and that Heike had no right to them. Heike crawled out of bed and thrust her body onto the ground. She began butt-scooting to the top of the stairs. She slowly lifted her legs with her hands to jolt them forward step by step as she made it to the bottom of the stairs. Sue Ellen was mocking Heike’s daughter’s beautiful coiled curls. Sue Ellen employed racist slurs in jest because that’s the way Sue Ellen had always done things. Heike gathered all her strength and determination and plunged herself upward through the air. In one bolt of energy she stood. She was dizzy, but she stood. Wanting to cry, she took deep breaths instead and ran through the walking program in her brain, giving it a quick visual of what walking would look like, and then commanded it to move. One foot in front of the other. She reminded her brain of what it felt like to feel upright and move straight so that her mind might feel tricked into moving properly. It was working mostly, though Heike clearly appeared vulnerable and awkward. She leaned on random objects until she made it to the kitchen to where Sue Ellen was washing dishes. Sue Ellen again teased Heike’s daughter Delphi about her hair, telling her it was a rat’s nest, and to try and comb it, and, simultaneously, completely ignoring Heike.
“Hi, Sue Ellen,” said Heike.
“Oh, hey. Aw, that’s nice you finally made it down here,” said Sue Ellen.
“Yes,” said Heike. “I have been trying to get down here for many days.”
Sue Ellen began to gloat. “Ya know, there’s just something I can’t wrap my head around. It’s how this mercury is affecting you. I mean, it’s everywhere. We probably all have mercury poisoning, but for some reason you’re not able to function, and it makes you very sick. I just don’t know what to think about people like you, you “creative types.” And I don’t know how things are with you people, but in my family we had to work for everything here since we were kids. I met people like you at my job before, thinking you don’t have to pay bills and join the rest of us because you’re some kind of artist. I don’t mind coming here and helping these kids out and teaching them the right way to do things because you have stuff to figure out.”
Heike grabbed the stove handle behind her, her whole body shaking just to stand, her legs wanting to give out. She was furious at the presence of this white racist woman in her home. Heike’s kids watched her and their grandma in concern. Heike raised her voice, fighting against the pain, her nervous system already overwhelmed on many levels. She concentrated on not appearing weak in front of this ghastly creature, this great big fake, who, before Heike fell ill, tried so hard to be her friend, but always took her children away for the day unannounced, and wouldn’t ever bring them back on time. All of these strange oddities now confirmed Heike’s worst fears—especially after these candid remarks just made by Sue Ellen. Sue Ellen wanted her children. She wanted to be a better mother than Heike and was going to prove it—at Heike’s expense.
Heike projected her voice over the hissing of the dishwater running. “Sue Ellen, you think I am making my illness up? You think I would want these kids to not know what it’s like to have a mother? Sue Ellen, I am their mother! How dare you insinuate that I don’t take care of them and that I never have. I have been here the whole time since before this happened, taking care of them!” Heike snapped.
But her mother-in-law was unrelenting. “You know, I see things in black and white, and I don’t know what it is that you have with my son Topher, but if you keep this up your marriage is toast. I know I come by here all the time and it always was chaos even before you got like this.”
Heike took the most heated gasp of air to fill her lungs (even with the cold-burning mercury throbbing in every cell, her throat lining was on fire), and said, “You know what, Sue Ellen, why don’t you leave. I got it today. We don’t need you here.”
Sue Ellen turned to Heike. “Heike, I don’t wanna say these things about you. Heike, you’re very lovable, but sometimes these things just have to be said.”
Heike walked over to Sue Ellen—by some strange force of magic—and looked her in the eye. “Sue Ellen, it’s time for you to go. I’m their mother. You will never be. You have even driven your own son mad. Topher was waving a knife in our kitchen yesterday before dinner, minutes after my own young son, Thor, threatened to kill himself because he thought he wasn’t a good dishwasher and helper. Your presence here has brought nothing but discord, falseness and anger. No one wants you here, and we don’t need your insincere gifts and fake niceties. Get out, please!”
Sue Ellen left. But she wasn’t going to give up what she thought was a stake in the situation. Heike rushed to her children and hugged them; they were bawling in confusion at this point and she told them how sorry she was.
Topher soon got home. Heike shared the news with him and he phoned his mother, telling her to return to the house. Topher opened the door. His mother Sue Ellen greeted him sheepishly.
“Was there som’n you wanted from me dear? How can I help you?”
Instantly, Topher sniped, “Mom, I would hate to bother you with my wife’s fake illness!”
Sue Ellen seemed shocked that Heike had communicated with Topher about the details of that day, about her argument with Heike. Sue Ellen barely spoke to her own husband and was counting on making Heike feel weak and disempowered enough to stay upstairs in her room all day. But instead, she witnessed that Heike had remained downstairs and—not only that—Heike had shared very delicate information which would endanger Sue Ellen’s ties to her own son.
“Topher,” said Sue Ellen, “I never said that. I am just saying these kids need a mother and you need to figure out what you’re going to do with your job because the kids need their dad—”
“Mom, fuck off,” Topher interrupted. “Just stay the fuck out of our lives.” Topher had never spoken to his mom like that before. He was crying.
Just then, his dad Fife showed up. Now, Fife was a simple man with a good heart, but he was beaten down. He drove a tractor for the roads and a plow during the winter. Together with Sue Ellen, they managed to carve out a decent house and monetary situation—Fife working for the county and Sue Ellen at the dentist office—but it was your typical abandoned American dream scenario; what Fife had really wanted was to work with wood, because he was a carpenter by trade, and had now passed the irrational fear of doing what one was truly passionate about right down to Topher.
Fife stood in the doorway to Heike’s home and shouted, “What the hell is going on here?”
Heike had had enough. She ran through the house looking for her children. She found them crying in the backyard. She grabbed both their hands. Although Heiki was severely ill, she found a deep resolve and took them for a walk. After about a mile, she could still hear her husband and his parents yelling in her own home.
Heike knew one thing—her marriage might not make it through this illness. Not because of anything Heike was doing, but because Topher was not emotionally equipped to deal with it. For about five years now, Topher had been checking out on her: going silent, not listening to her stories, and putting their dreams off for another day. Heike wished she was able enough to drive because she felt in her guts that the best thing to do, at this point, would be to leave.
IV.
Heike and Topher managed to move to southern Iowa away from Decorah. Heike loved watching the Mississippi River and every day she made a point to visit. She was now well enough to drive short distances and walk for at least three hours of the day (versus fifteen minutes or not at all) so she gladly took it. Heike found a person to assist in her healing—another generous being who had also been mercury poisoned as severely as Heike. The new protocol was slow but effective.
Heike and Topher began working together at the local grocery, Andover Market. She was happy to try and push herself, but she noticed her limbs would go limp and heavy mid-stroll while stocking shelves in the Health Department. She enjoyed giving people a snippet of hope if they came into the store and needed guidance on special diet protocols or had extremely sensitive autoimmune cases. However, Heike also knew she wasn’t being compensated for her knowledge and so she decided to become a postpartum doula. Heike wanted to help women with postpartum depression which she was all too familiar with after the birth of her own twins. Topher was a solid father for the most part. But he would sometimes become emotionally distant with little notice. This, of course, began with the birth of their children. Heike was slowly realizing that no amount of waiting would make Topher come around. He seemed to be agitated with the lack of privacy, temper tantrums, and constant needs of the children. He never complained, but Heike could tell.
There was a moment that revealed to Heike the continued vulnerable state of her relationship with Topher. One of her husband’s friends was visiting them for a short period of time. He was very close to both Heike and Topher and held her babies hours after their birth.
“His name is ‘Hank,’” her little boy, laughing, would always say. “Hank is a funny name.”
Then Heike’s daughter Delphi would say, “Hank, your jokes always make Mommy smile.”
Hank blushed and winked warmly at Heike. A spark was lit at this moment. Heike had never looked at Hank as having romantic potential before. But Heike’s heart had been in “longing” mode for nearly three years straight. She knew her husband Topher would be home late from work, so she made dinner for Hank and the kids. Hank was very engaging.
“Heike, you never look different from the day I met you,” said Hank.
Heike knew that was a lie because she was terribly ill, and it showed. Her face had become gaunt over the last year and she had lost twenty pounds.
She chuckled. “That’s a riot Hank, you know I don’t look at all the same.”
Hank laughed. “I don’t know about that. Heike, it sure feels the same talking to you.”
He was sweet. After dinner, Hank helped her carry the twins upstairs for bed. He gave Heike a small hug goodbye.
The next day, Hank called her from a bar, before he left town to return home to Seattle. The two joked around about Hank’s present living situation.
“It’s great,” he said. “My new friends are just like the old ones I had in my twenties, because they literally are in their twenties. They look and act exactly the same as my old crew. There’s even a young Topher, and I don’t ever have to grow up.” Hank blew a sigh of relief.
Heike just felt plain sad and sighed, too. “Hank, that’s pretty ridiculous. I mean, you think you’re going to room with twenty-four-year-olds your whole life? I mean, you are fifty-two after all. How much fun is getting drunk every night anyway?” Heike paused, then continued, “I know they’re fun to skateboard with, though, so I get it, and as long as they’re nice to you, I guess.”
But Hank wasn’t listening. “Well, you know me, I hate people. Except you, Heike. If you and the kids would move out to Seattle by me and leave Iowa, that would make me an exceedingly happy man.” He paused, then quickly added, “Oh, Topher should come, too. There are so many rivers to canoe here and cool things we could do and cool state parks to visit. It’s beautiful here.”
A pang hit her heart because she knew Topher would never leave Iowa. There wasn’t anything she could do except continue to watch her and her husband drift apart. Especially during her intense illness flare ups, Topher would often send the kids in to check on her, but sometimes a whole day would go by before they spoke. Then it would be mostly about his work. Heike was sick of this.
Heike enrolled in a local greenhouse building class and made a new friend named Carson. He was younger than her, and they began hanging out after class.
She admired his calm demeanor, which she mostly attributed to his lack of past traumatic experiences, or to his youth in general, because he hadn’t yet truly tasted defeat. There was one day when things almost became intimate. Heike would see Carson once a week for painting, to check in on his greenhouse progress (he was building one in his yard), chit chat, and sometimes grab a bite to eat. Heike was forty-one, and he was thirty-four. Somehow the age difference rarely came into conversation, nor did it have any mitigating effect on how they related to one another. There was a moment, though, when he held her hand in order to softly guide her through the hoop house, and take her to the end of the seedlings that were currently budding away on three flats reaching about ten feet across. This section of the greenhouse was impressive, but then, all of Carson’s endeavors were. He never stopped at anything; in fact, he had even re-built his own house. Heike knew that this was mainly due to the fact that he did not have children or a partner, but she also wondered if maybe Carson just was that brilliant and full of care. One thing Heike was sure of, however, was that the simple act of Carson holding her hand gave her a surge of electricity she hadn’t felt in nearly a decade. He chuckled, amused, as if he could sense the current of energy himself, and placed his hand very slowly and carefully on Heike’s back. Then with his other hand, he caressed Heike’s face to brush the hair out of her eyes, and then pressed delicately on one of the darkest freckles on her cheek. They felt so natural together, and once again they found themselves giggling. This of course frightened Heike. She turned to Carson and said, “I should go.”
Carson smiled. “I won’t stop you, Heike. I know you have your youngin’ to think of, so I won’t keep you. But I do have something to tell you.”
He stood next to her and his warm heart beamed off him in all directions. Heike could taste the thickness of the air and her hair stood on end, but still she remained focused, staring at the plants he had been lovingly growing.
Carson said, “Heike, I haven’t known you long, but it’s become so apparent to me all that we have in common. I don’t think Topher makes you happy, or you wouldn’t be here with me.” He sighed. “In fact, I know he leaves you and the kids there all day long. You’re a brilliant woman, you stay busy and strong, but it has to be difficult and lonely with all those hours he puts in. And then you told me when he finally does get home, he barely utters a word to you.” Carson seemed mildly frustrated. “I know you probably won’t ever leave him, but I want you to know I’m developing romantic feelings towards you. Also, I have met your children, and wish they had someone around to nourish all of their curiosities. I wish that entire task didn’t just fall upon your shoulders,” Carson finished. He looked directly at Heike and asked, “Do you think we could fall in love if we kept going on like this, being such close friends?”
Heike smiled and turned to Carson. “Carson, no one has spoken to me with such directness in quite some time. Your observations are accurate, but at this point I don’t know if I would feel right leaving Topher. I feel I owe him my life, for some reason. Maybe it has to do with how we found each other, and the amount of work I’ve put into the relationship. Or maybe it’s because I know him and feel comfortable being in this dull routine, because I can depend on it,” Heike gently lamented.
“Yes, but I want you, Heike.” Carson was almost sweating. His face was squinting with emphasis and subtle innuendo.
At that moment, Heike suddenly realized how closely she and Carson were standing, and then, she couldn’t help herself; she turned quickly to embrace him. Together their bodies joined as if they were one flame. Heike knew that if she let go of the embrace, she would be so close to his face, and be eye to eye with Carson, and that at that point there would be no turning back. Slowly she pulled away, and before she could even take a breath, he was kissing her. She did not stop him.
V.
Heike had managed to halt the passionate exchange between her and Carson. She simply didn’t know if he would really be there for her, or if he was just infatuated, somehow, with a fantasy version of her in his mind. Maybe Carson has convinced himself I am someone he desires, she thought. But likewise, I do feel chemistry with him, always have. Just not sure what this will mean for me, she thought, if I choose to let my feelings be free and explore our desires together. I wonder where that would leave me and the kids? Heike anxiously played mental ping-pong while staring out the window of her and Topher’s home, watching the twins play in the front yard. Topher wouldn’t be home for another four hours. Heike decided to join her children outside. She had begun to feel slightly ill and triggered by all the confusion. A tornado swirled around within her.
In the far-off distance, Heike heard a faint buzzing. She found herself distracted by a moving cloud that was inching slowly towards her from a big bunch of magenta azalea bushes in her yard. As it neared, she could see it was a swarm of bees. They started moving away from Heike’s house in a dance-like motion, rhythmically somersaulting like shooting stars. She decided to follow the bees as they swayed back and forth and darted all around. Heike told the kids she would be right back.
The bees led her to a portion of the land two houses away that she had never explored since moving to southern Iowa. She and Topher lived high up on a bluff where an old funicular railway elevator had been built. The elevator was built in the Victorian era to cut across a narrow gorge so that a lover could get to his object of affection as rapidly as possible, directly after work. The carts were glass-and-wood enclosures that would trolley on wooden and steel tracks all the way down the bluff to the street below. The bees led her to the garden grounds located below the elevator platform near the very top of the bluff. It was just then that she heard a voice.
“Heike!” hollered Carson. “Hey, how’s it going? I didn’t imagine I would run into you here.” Carson was projecting his voice from the railings located around the elevator house. He said, “Hold on, let me come to you.” He went around the fencing to the gardens lining the perimeter to where Heike was.
It was then that Heike realized that Carson would always make the effort to meet her halfway. She smiled at the thought, and knew she had to leave Topher. Nearly three years had gone by since Heike first fell severely ill, and she recalled those days she could hardly make it to the bathroom or make the bed; the days that she slept in old food because she was too sick to hold a spoon or a fork and sometimes would dump the whole plate of dinner on the bed by accident. She longed for Topher to come and tell her he believed in her, but he never did. Although he would resentfully drive her all over to her appointments with various specialists, they would never speak. Heike had learned to be alone in a relationship. Sometimes she and Topher would have sex, but the connection was sparsely there. Once Heike slowly started to be more mobile, she would make time to cry every day after Topher had left for work.
VI.
“Heike, what do you mean!?” cried Topher. “You want to throw away our sixteen years, and for what?” Topher was furious.
“I was there the whole time, Topher, and you never even saw me!” shouted Heike. “Topher, so many times I tried to apologize for my illness and so many times you pushed me away. I know you’re scared and so am I. Especially on my harder days when I feel so sick all over again. I know I’m not out of the woods yet. But I can’t get it out of my head, the way your mother treated me, and now you still talk to her as if nothing happened. The way you ignore me when I want to connect. The way our love-making has become mechanical!” Heike was in a moment of clarity.
Topher got inches away from her face and Heike’s back was now up against the refrigerator.
“When are you going to get it through your head that I fucking love you!” screamed Topher.
Heike started trembling. She shivered, sobbing uncontrollably. She knew with every ounce of life that was left in her body that Topher did not truly love her, but was only afraid of being without her.
“Get away from me. This isn’t love! We yell like this nearly every night once the twins go to sleep and I get incredibly ill afterward! I end up bursting out the door, going on hikes or walks for hours on end just to find a moment’s peace or sanity, and all the while my body feels like quitting!” Heike was livid. “It’s over,” she said.
Topher broke down. “I think I might kill myself. I don’t know why I gave everything up to be with you and take care of the kids.” He couldn’t control himself and said, “You ruined my life! I changed for you and it still wasn’t enough. Have you fallen for someone else?” Topher was distraught.
VII.
“Heike,” said a disembodied voice. “Heike. Look, look over here,” the voice boomed.
Heike realized she was dreaming. She recognized the place in the dream. She was back in northern Iowa at her favorite frolic zone—Effigy Mounds State Park, in her old town of Decorah.
“Heike, don’t forget! You must be strong, Heike!” The voice was that of an older man.
Heike looked around and saw the man was standing on the edge of the Bear Mound. The Bear Effigy was a mounded sculpture of earth, outlined with stones in the shape resembling a bear. It was her most treasured formation at the location. She immediately went over to the man who she almost recognized. He was an Indigenous Elder who was one of the original Mississippian Mound Builders of the bear mound, and mounds along the river located in the park. Heike had somehow jumped timelines to the past or he had come to greet her in the present. This Elder Mound Builder had the sign of the Sirian Genetic Code Builders on his cane and necklace. Heike then realized they were descendants of the Code-Keepers of whom Heike had originally been built by.
“Heike, with each life you have been reincarnated here upon the Earth, developing alongside this planet . . . Your DNA is programmed not to forget, much like these Earthen Mounds of Ursa Minor and Major and Aquila. The Earth, which is also a living being, may never be reprogrammed or have her memory wiped. You are one of the original deities to walk upon Earth as the Obsidian Butterfly, Itzpapalotl. We see and know you well! Here the timelines have been blended to overlap so that you may receive this message. You must not fear death, Heike. You have seen so much, and your story is only just now truly beginning. For that boy you have met—he will bring you a new child onto this Earth and this child will catalyze, along with many others, a new vision for Earth as she continues to become endangered by current practices which deplete her life sources. The children coming in will remember all that the former original deities tried to protect and accomplish.” The old man continued, “Heike, I know you think you are brimming with too many toxins to bear any more children, and the load is heavy. This isn’t your only role, however. As you continue to heal and place your faith in this planet as she holds you, you shall become the voice for her plight, combining with others willing to dedicate themselves to the path of Earth’s salvation. We are all organically designed to be caretakers of this Living Library, but have been purposefully brainwashed to forget, so that the false powers that be can rape these lands and reconstruct Earth Codes for their advantage. Once Earth becomes wiped, her inner-core star will cease to glow, and all that is stored on Earth shall vanish into a vacuum. We cannot allow for this new future!” the Elder lamented.
Heike watched speechless, for she saw the whole story forwards and backwards playing out before her eyes, as if it had already been written. Heike knew she wasn’t safe unless she made it so—and that somehow her safety was deeply intertwined with the Earth.
A huge thunderous clamor shook the ground and produced shockwaves in the sky. Heike looked up and saw long-ponytailed purple thunderbirds dancing and flying amongst the lightning that had begun to strike. The creatures began laughing. A gentle warmth began to fill her belly with calm.
Heike heard a door slam and looked outside. She was awake now. She didn’t have time to ask the Elder his name or what would happen. She saw Topher leaving with his old, reliable backpack, and a bunch of boxes. Heike opened the window. “You’re leaving now?” she asked, loud enough for him to hear, but without straining herself.
“Yes, Heike. I already explained everything to the kids. I’m going to spend the rest of the year camping and working, but will see them on weekends,” Topher said, with tears in his eyes.
When Heike had first met Topher, he was always spending time outdoors for long trips. In fact, this is what drew her to him. She was both happy and sad for Topher, but secretly wished it wouldn’t have taken them separating, and eventually divorcing, to have him return to the things that once made him happy.
Her heart broke for what felt like the millionth time that night. Her brain flared up with mercury toxicity and Lyme so badly that she thought she might die right there and then, but she knew the kids were nearby, and that she must not give up. Everything was odd and foreign now, but she had to keep going.
VIII.
“Hold out your hands,” Carson said happily.
“Okay, but what for?” Heike laughed.
Carson had been constructing a dove house and hadn’t told Heike he finished it—but she had a feeling it was related.
Heike was standing in front of two small, beautifully designed gates that were part wood, stained glass, and metal. Both doors were opened. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Two doves landed softly upon her wrists. She opened her eyes, and for some reason, wanted to cry. It had only been six months since Topher and her had separated, and soon their marriage would be voided, yet here was this gentle, kind man asking her to play with doves.
She laughed out loud.
“Carson, you finished. That’s so excellent!” Heike beamed.
“Yeah, Heike, you were the first, and, well, only person I wanted to share this with.” He laughed. “There’s about ten doves in this little sanctuary enclosure and they’re all choosing to stay there of their own free will. It’s a sight. They leave during the day and return each dusk.” Carson paused. “I missed you, Heike. I haven’t seen you for three months, but it felt a whole lot longer if you ask me. But anyway, it was hard to keep this project a secret from you, Heike, since you and the kids have been hanging around here lately. I basically had to do all I could to keep from telling.”
They hugged.
IX.
Heike heard her daughter scream.
“Mommy!” wailed Delphi.
Heike was dealing with neurological numbness, but immediately sprinted to find Delphi in the kitchen downstairs. Three blue beings surrounded her daughter. Heike instantly knew who they were. She was angry.
“I demand to know what brings you here after all this time,” Heike said, furiously. She began to recall all the times they could have helped her, come to aid her family, or been a resource of technological aid, somehow, in this present life. Why had they waited so long?
“Heike,” the Elder Council answered, speaking together as one, fluctuating, but unified voice. “You are one of the last demigods remaining, and now, if we do not convene, there is little hope left for the development of this solar system, let alone the many others. The majority of the demigods still roaming this Earth are falling ill, as the landscape grows more treacherous by the day, riddled with increasing and invisible threats. The science, which once kept this planet intact and flourishing, is no longer being observed.
“We need you to come with us, and demonstrate to our Council of Thirteen, that your skills have indeed returned, and if they may be, hopefully, stronger than ever.”
Suddenly, the voice of the Tallest Elder boomed above the others. “Heike, I know that the mercury has run amok. This is, however, something that we may fix.” Heike’s brows furrowed, and, as she cast her gaze towards this figure, she realized it was the same Elder who had revealed themselves to her, in her vision of the Mounds.
Then, as rapidly as the Tallest, another Elder stepped forward and spoke, each word pronounced articulately and powerfully, as if they formed a stentorian, imperial mandate: “Heike, will you and your family join us for a week?”
Delphi now clung to the legs of Heike. Both of them trembled with each breath. While Heike regarded this new Elder, something of their voice reminded her of Cerridwen.
“How do I know it’s safe?” asked Heike. “You wait until now to come? How can I be certain you haven’t come to erase my DNA, or my memories? We didn’t exactly leave on the greatest of terms,” continued Heike.
“Heike,” the Elder continued. “I have known you from the first month of your birth.”
“Cerridwen?” Heike gasped. “No, it can’t be! All this time, I thought you had died, and yet here you stand. It feels too late. I am not capable of functioning at a multicellular level anymore.” Heike wanted to collapse, but went on speaking so that her daughter would not be scared. “You abandoned me here. I don’t know what purpose a person or deity like me would have on Earth anymore.” Heike began laughing.
Cerridwen walked slowly over to Heike.
“I am so sorry. Can you please forgive us, forgive me, Heike?” Cerridwen reached out their finger and gently touched Heike’s tears which pooled on her cheeks. “This was never my intention.” Quietly, Cerridwen continued, “Will you come with us?” Making unflinching eye contact, Cerridwen then said, “Your children will not be harmed.”
Heike took Cerridwen’s hand. “All right. Fine. But let me wake Thor. Then we can go. Do I need to pack anything? Won’t we need attire?”
Cerridwen replied, “Yes, Heike. That is fine. But we will supply you and the children with clothing.”
“Can I bring my protocol? For health reasons,” murmured Heike, slightly embarrassed, but also a little perplexed how all this would work, especially with her being disabled.
“No, that won’t be necessary. We will put you in the Plasmic Regenerative Oscillator. You remember one similar to your first experience with ionized plasma after being created,” Cerridwen said calmly.
Heike whisked Delphi up the stairs where Thor lay sleeping. She looked outside Thor’s bedroom window and could see the cloaked starship that would be taking them. “Thor,” she said. “Wake up.”
“Mommy, what’s going on? What’s wrong?” Thor groggily asked.
And within minutes, they were all back downstairs and headed towards the ship.
X.
Heike remembered star travel as if it had happened yesterday, except it was perhaps eons ago whence she had traveled to the Codemakers’ planet, the Dogstar. She and the kids slept in a metallic chamber. The beds were cold, but serviceable. Lights blurred as the stars zoomed by. She wondered if she would see Rowan or Cerridwen again. A little pang struck her heart. She saw Carson in her mind’s eye. She wondered if they would truly take her and the kids back to Earth.
What felt like two nights had passed and finally they landed in the starport. Before her and the kids could move, ambassadors opened the door to her quarters. “Come with us immediately,” they commanded.
Heike grabbed her kids and exited the starship.
She was being observed by everyone in the communion hall. And there, laid before her, sat a giant, whirring, obsidian, box-like structure—the Ionic Plasmic Regenerator. The two Arcturians running the device motioned to her. She worried about her kids. Cerridwen appeared, anticipating her thoughts. “We will watch them. This will only take about ten minutes.”
Heike stepped toward the machine and knew there was no turning back. “It still looks the same,” she thought aloud, “like a giant spa shower made of volcanic flint.”
“Except this obsidian,” Cerridwen explained softly, “reconfigures mercury by pulling it out of tissue and dismantling its molecular structure when mixed with solarized star plasma.”
The toxins become inert, she thought privately to herself. She knew that when all the toxins were being drawn out so quickly, in order to render her body capable of functioning, she would experience flashbacks and extreme pain.
The council turned on the spray jets of ionized plasma just then and played a theta frequency tune to resonate within the obsidian. The first memory she saw was that of Carson, their kiss. Then the pain followed. Heike’s cells were being separated. She remembered that she had to count forwards and backwards each day since falling ill just to keep numbers straight in her head. She recalled Topher’s laugh. Then, finally, she saw the birth of the twins, those thirty-six hours of labor. She began to break down while everything broke apart. Suddenly, the machine stopped. It was done.
Heike breathed and touched her body to see if it was all still there.
The Regenerator opened. There stood the council. Heike was completely naked.
“Tell us about the reacquired skills you have, Heike. We need to know you’re ready to understand your role in all of this, and what you are to do next once we return you to Earth.” A tall, blue, femme figure went on, politely, but stern in face. “We want you to heal whatever is left in your body, but our machine took care of most of it. To do it all right now would perhaps kill you and destroy your DNA eternally.”
Heike said, “I’m ready to hear whatever it is I must.”
“Heike, you can hear the ground of Earth talking again, is this not correct? That certain places of Gaia have been calling out to you as well? And that you have found a new love—a young human being with skills to build in an almost uncanny way?” asked the council in a matter of fact fashion.
Heike chuckled, still out of breath. “You mean Carson. Yes, we both can build.”
“Heike, we want you to go back to Earth to set up a Living Library Colony that remains on the planet. We want you to explore and experiment with the different ways to heal soil and Earth’s creatures, as well as provide ancient technological secrets to those willing to study alongside you. Can you do that, Heike? We also would like for you to keep your heart open at this time, for we have seen in the future, and many will be wanting these new ancient archived techniques of Earth Preservation. Your powers are growing, and there are about ten other demigods reincarnated upon Gaia at this time. They will find you. We have also seen that you will soon be well enough to have a child, and this child—along with Dephi and Thor and many other children like them—will lead a new way of life. These kids you will be open to finding—and allowing to seek you and your family, as well as Earth Keeper teachers—are needed at this time. You will not be alone in this, so please do not worry.” The council finished and turned to address Cerridwen, “Okay, that is enough. You can take her now. We’ve seen all that we need to.”
Heike’s vision went completely black. She thrashed about for a second, only to realize she was home with her head on her pillow. She jolted up instantly. Throwing the covers off as fast as she possibly could, she ran down the hall with pure determination. Heike noticed her legs felt stronger, somehow, and extremely responsive. She turned the corner to Delphi and Thor’s rooms, peeking in at both of them. They lay there, both in their bedrooms, breathing heavily, and soundly asleep.
Heike instantly knew the Arcturian and the Sirius beings had sent her and the kids back. She moved silently into Delphi’s room and hugged her as tightly as she could. Delphi began to giggle in her sleep. Heike then ran to Thor’s room and hugged him, tussling his hair, and he smiled. She began to cry. Thank you, Cerridwen, she thought.
Slowly, Heike made her way back down the hall. Her body felt much more present. As Heike entered her room, she saw her phone light up. It was Carson.
“Hello?” Heike answered.
“Heike, hi, how are you? I know it’s late, but can I come over? Would that be okay? I feel like for some reason I just had to see you. I know this isn’t like me but . . . I don’t know, is everything okay?” He sounded genuinely concerned.
Heike paused, then said, “Carson, we’re here. Come over, though I don’t know what I can offer you at this hour. I’m exhausted, but it would be nice to see you.”
They hung up and Heike lay on the bed. She was home again.
A voice came in from the Mississippi River, singing softly. Heike heard the water speak: “We want to show you everything now. We are happy you’re back again, Heike!” The voice of the Mississippi Water Guardian seemed almost giddy. Heike felt a little bit of joy rise up inside her, for the first time in she didn’t know how long. A gust of wind blew and off in the distance a blue jay squawked. Her old friend would be happy to see her in the morning.
There was a knock at the door. Heike went over, slowly turning the knob.
Carson had brought her a giant wand of fresh passion flowers, the leaves and flowers still hanging from it.
“Did you drag that all the way here?” Heike was amused.
“Yeah, Heike. It’s for you,” Carson replied.
“Thank you, Carson,” Heike said, then hugged him. “Come inside—”
Heike looked up and saw a shooting star. Carson did too.
“Dang, did you see that? Holy cow, that was cool!” Carson exclaimed, glowing.
The door shut, and Heike knew, from this moment on, that she would never be the same. Her illness was still there, though maybe not as severe, but she could still detect it. However, she was willing to fight back now. Heike had new resolve.
They went upstairs and moved quietly into Heike’s room. The moon shone through the bedroom window, and they sat on the bed facing the moonlight. Their faces were aglow.
♦ END