Richard F. Burton had been an initiate of two pagan and two Islamic brotherhoods as well as various Christian fraternities. He was now the initiate once again. His guides were now unwilling to wait until the stocking of the library to leave, as Jan was afraid of Randy being found out for his crime. Randy had been left to tend to himself as Mrs. Ham tended to Jan, openly declaring Randy to be a ‘beast’, which brought a deep heartfelt laugh from both combatants. No sooner had Randy staunched the flow of blood from his nose and donned his menacing attire, than he produced the time-travel hoop and a small surgical kit; a scalpel and a type of tweezers.
After commanding Stanley to bring their belongings to the kitchen and help Jan get dressed, Randy ‘ignited’ the hoop so that it hovered, which caused Mrs. Ham to pass out, who was in turn cared for by Jan, who had thankfully caught her before she hit the floor. Stanley was not the least frightened by the hoop as it levitated above the table. Randy’s now blood-clotted nose rendered his voice even more Mephistophelean, “Rick, I am extracting a ‘key’ from this hoop. It is in fact an integral element of this technology and will link all of your genetic and chronological information to this device, which is in effect a vastly intelligent machine that has the power of a small star housed within it. I like to think of this as a transmigration device that permits you to be reincarnated in a copy of your own body, though Sensei disagrees. I shall humbly await your impression upon our transit.”
The man then swabbed Richard’s left wrist with alcohol and then withdrew a glowing platinum wire that was nearly transparent from the small panel in the hoop. Randy then continued in his nasal rasp, “I will thread this just under the skin of your left wrist.”
Burton was worried. “But Randy, the wrist is a complex joint. Ligature, nerves and arteries and veins all ride close to the surface. How will you—not even a surgeon I suppose—accomplish this without wounding or maiming me?”
“The wire does the work. Just relax Rick.”
With that Randy made an incision and inserted the rounded head of the wire into the wound as he dabbed away the blood. The man then held the tail of the wire, which was perhaps nine inches long, between the tweezers and wiggled it gently. As if stimulated, like some serpentine pet patted on the back and then told to go fetch, the wire wormed its way around Richard’s wrist just beneath the skin. It seemed to light its own way with a glow that radiated from its head, until, after perhaps ten minutes of extremely slow progress, the glowing head of the wire emerged from the very same incision. The glowing head now seemed less an eye than a mouth, the mouth of some otherworldly worm just emerged from the bowels of the earth, as it flexed its orifice expectantly.
Stanley was observing with great interest, and, apparently Mrs. Ham had been revived, because she let out a squeak as she gazed upon the strange scene and passed out again in Jan’s arms. Randy then took his tweezers like an indulgent pet owner feeding his pet’s own tail to it, and placed the terminus of the wire into the hungry orifice. With that the wire seemed to become one and contract within Richard’s wrist, where it glowed in its entirety just under the skin for perhaps another ten minutes until it was not more than a faint outline beneath the skin.
Randy spoke up, “It’s all done Rick; you’re keyed for time-travel. The wire has interfaced with you so that you will be recognized by the hoop when you grab hold of a dial with your left hand. You are ready to rock and roll.”
Fifteen minutes later Jan asked Stanley and Mrs. Ham to go up to his room to retrieve a book of his which did not exist and the three of them repaired to the courtyard, where Randy set their target date on the dials of the hoop before they grabbed hold with their left hands. Then when Randy calibrated the ‘master’ dial on the hoop to the same date as each of their dials, being 2012, the device emitted a deep magnetic ‘whoop’ and a thunderhead seemed to materialize overhead. As he looked up into the cloud he noticed little Stanley peering at them through the upstairs window with a look of wonder on his smiling face.
Just as he began to wonder what was racing through the mind of this unlettered Negro boy he felt himself struck by lightning and torn to shreds at the same instant. The pain was excruciating and then instantly forgotten as he was being sucked into the end of the vastly enlarged platinum hoop—Allah preserve my soul!
As he was sucked into the timeless brilliance his every function was suspended—even thought. He began to experience flashes of his past, as if snippets of his long turbulent life were being summoned willy-nilly by some vile sorcerer to torment him according to some hellish plan for his damnation: he sat before the assembled audience only to be told that poor Speke had died in a hunting accident—so obviously a suicide; he was whipped with a riding crop by a British official while in disguise as a travelling Persian physician; he sat in his tent, disguised as a travelling visionary in Sind, writing a poem to his beloved, when he was told she had been executed by her father for sending a missive to him; he and his dear brother were stomping their fallen nanny with their little boots as she cried for help against the little devils; the malevolent Giant Face that haunted his baby fears was rising to engulf him—and then it did.
No!
