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THE MAGICIAN
Jon Rappoport
The magician
The magician
by Jon Rappoport
May 25, 2014
He had left this place a long time ago. He had left behind its symbols, its plots, its machinations, its madness, its masters and slaves. He had left the tinny phony continuum for better spots.
He had left the limited range of emotions as well, the programmed responses, the fevered needs of the group, the whining and complaining, the morbid pretensions.
He had seen the labyrinth and rejected it as a fool’s game.
But during his subsequent travels, he realized his own freedom permitted him to come back, if he wanted to. Freedom meant he could come back and go away, come back and go away, didn’t it?
So he returned…as a man.
One day while he was walking along a crowded street in the city, he saw a creature in a suit, a nameless entity with Arctic eyes and soft pink hands and a way of strolling that spoke of vast comforts, privileged status handed down over generations. The creature smelled of money, big money salted away in reserves too remote to discover.
The man followed the creature for many blocks and saw it enter an office building. He waited on a bus bench. He picked up a newspaper and read about the latest deaths in the city. There were many. The quality of writing had deteriorated so badly the news stories were strange and vague and muffled.
Were these deaths actual murders committed person to person? Were germs the killers? Had people been fleeced of their savings and then turned out of their homes to waste away from exposure? There was no way to ferret out the facts. It was maddening.
The man, however, felt a force emanate from the articles, like an advancing cloud, like a plague…and then he knew. He understood.
When the creature emerged from the office building, the man continued to follow him.
The man followed the creature uptown into an area where most of the buildings had been destroyed by vandals.
The man moved across a huge field where no grass grew, and he finally arrived at a prison that no longer operated. It was a dim shell, empty, and the creature waited at the entrance.
When the man arrived next to him, the creature said, “What do you want from me?”
The man bent down, picked up a brick, and struck the creature on the head and knocked him down.
He dragged the creature into the prison, through a dim corridor, and put him in a cell.
The rusty padlock was still serviceable. The man locked the creature in the cell and left him there.
Three days later, the man walked through the city and saw that the faces of the people were changing. The despair was draining away. A fever was breaking.
The man approached a policeman and told him there was a killer locked up in the abandoned prison, and of course the policeman ignored him.
The man went to the mayor’s office and told an assistant to an assistant that the death rate was receding, and the assistant turned away with disdain.
The man went to Control Central and tried to speak with several robots on duty, but they too refused to engage in conversation.
The next day, newspapers and television news announced that the death rate in the city was on the rise. The man didn’t believe this.
It occurred to him that the powers-that-be, the rulers, needed to promote death. It was vital to their cause. It was politically useful. It was also personally satisfying to them to believe death was on the march. They fed off the notion. They drank in the idea of death.
The man went to a park where people stood on small platforms and lectured and harangued on a variety of subjects.
He stepped up on a platform and said, “I want to tell you about death eaters.” A few heads turned his way.
“Yes,” he said, “the death eaters. They’re in charge.”
He said it again. “The death eaters.”
He kept repeating the phrase slowly, and people began walking his way. Ten people, twenty, fifty. They drifted over to his platform.
“The death eaters are in charge of the city,” he said. “They need more death, and they’ll say it exists and it’s growing, even if it isn’t. They have to have death on their minds.”
Someone said, “That’s right!”
“These people, the rulers,” the man said, “are working for other people who also want to eat death, and those people work for others who have the same hunger. It keeps going up and up.”
Now there were a hundred people listening to him.
“We’ve always known this,” the man said, “but we’ve been afraid to admit it. And we’ve been frustrated because we believed we could never find the creature who sat on top of the heap.”
A few people began applauding.
“Who could blame us?” the man said. “They keep secrets. How could we find the creature at the top?”
“But this creature exists,” the man said. “I can’t tell you how old he is or how long he’s been running things or what his name is…I don’t think he has a name.”
The crowd had swelled to a few hundred people.
“But I can tell you this,” the man said. “I found him. I recognized him on the street. I don’t know how. But it happened. I think he’s been walking among us and we just haven’t seen him. We’ve been fooling ourselves.”
The crowd went quiet.
The man took a deep breath. Then he said, “I think we’ve been worshiping him.”
The crowd was absolutely still.
“Not on purpose,” the man said, “but we’ve been worshiping an idea of someone, someone in a long story we’ve been told for a long time. And that’s how we went blind.”
A sudden roar went up from the crowd.
“Follow me,” the man said, “and I’ll show you this creature.”
He stepped off the platform and several men came to his side.
Led by the man, the whole crowd walked through the park and headed uptown.
As they went, more people joined them.
By the time they reached the old prison, they were several thousand.
They heard a screaming.
The man led them into the prison, down the corridor, until they arrived at the cell. The creature was screaming and tearing at the bars.
“Look at him,” the man said. “He’s the one.”
A woman said, “But he’s just a child, an innocent child.”
“No he isn’t,” someone else said. “He’s a horrible looking thing. A monster.”
The creature stopped screaming and let go of the bars.
He smiled. He said, “I’m nobody. Just a person.”
The man said, “Are you willing to answer our questions?”
“Of course,” the creature said. “There’s been a terrible misunderstanding.”
Someone handed the man a stone and he used it to hammer at the lock until it broke. He walked inside and took the creature by the arm. He led him out of the cell, along the corridor, until they came to the yard. In that open space, the crowd gathered, and the man guided the creature up a small incline.
“All right,” the man said, “then this is why we’re here. To decide. We’re going to thrash it out. Anyone and everyone can question this creature. We’ll stay here as long as we have to, until we know who he is.”
“But he’s just a little boy,” the woman repeated.
“No he isn’t,” someone said. “He’s a soldier. Can’t you see his uniform, his medals?”
“He’s a doctor,” a boy said. “He lives in my neighborhood.”
“At my daughter’s school,” someone else said. “He’s a teacher.”
And on it went. The creature was a government official, he was a thief, a banker, a mental patient, a rabid dog, a holy man, a god, a scientist, a cousin, a brother, a beloved friend, an escaped convict, a killer.
The man held up his hand.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s why we’re here. To talk with him. To find out why we can’t see the same thing. To decide. As long as it takes.”
“The dream,” someone said. “Of the thousand year trial.”
Someone else said, “This is so exciting.”
An old lady said, “A thirty-day free trial. Money back if you’re not fully satisfied.”
“We have to perform surgery on his brain and find out what makes it tick. Then we’ll know.”
“Make him confess.”
“Give the poor creature something to eat and drink.”
“Ask him about Satan.”
“I bet he’s a CEO.”
“He’s a victim.”
“I can save you all a great deal of time,” the creature said.
He took off all his clothes. He stood naked before the crowd.
His body was made of hundreds of small fractured mirrors, and when the people in crowd stared at him, they saw a many-layered group…but no one saw himself.
The crowd trembled. People moved around desperately, trying to see themselves.
Chaos broke out.
People began howling and running.
The creature stood and waited.
When, finally, everyone was gone…
The creature stood alone.
He moved back into the prison, deep into its core.
There he stood, in a cavernous space, and breathed deeply. He looked into himself and saw the whole world. Everyone in it, at once.
He continued gazing. He never saw one person. Just everyone.
He held that vision, as he had for centuries, and wondered how long it would be before someone in the world would break out.
A few hours later…
The man appeared again. He stood in the cavern and looked at the creature.
“It’s just you and I now,” the man said.
“Ah,” the creature said, “so you’ve cracked the code.”
“Everything isn’t everything,” the man said.
“No,” the creature said. “It isn’t.”
He paused.
“Do you want to know what the world is?” the creature said. “It’s a wheel. There are four perceptions on the wheel. One, the individual sees himself as hopeless. Two, he sees himself as part of the Group. Three, he sees himself as free and independent. Four, he sees himself connected to a higher realm, inhabited by everyone and everything. The wheel spins around and around. People see it as a blur. They can’t stop it. They can’t think about it. You stopped the wheel. You saw me. Now go back to the city and try to explain all this. I wish you good luck.”
The creature laughed.
The man turned and walked away.
He heard and felt the creature run toward him. He knew the creature was going to try to kill him. He turned and struck the creature on the temple with the stone he’d been carrying. The creature fell to the ground.
Spontaneously, heat rose from the ground and the hundreds of mirrors crashed, splintered, and fell apart.
Space and time, in this place, this world, collapsed? went dark? dissolved?
Out of the void came another sun, a different sun, rising. In another sky. As if it had been waiting for this moment. A day behind the day.
Feeling refreshed, the man walked back toward the city, not knowing what he would find.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com