One Sad Mother Lover.

After traveling high into the mountains Paul and Professor Not reached the end of a dirt road, and followed a foot path into the pine forest. Along the way there was a great many people and donkeys moving up and down the narrow trail, carrying in supplies for the Ass Festival. Paul volunteered to carry in a large box of green beans intended for "Pinkbeard's Kitchen" beyond the main circle. Carrying this box proved to be more difficult than he first expected as the trail carried on and on, soon he lost sight of Professor Not.

Paul knew that there were countless people, many of them quite high, who would respond to any cry of distress. So hedid not worry about finding Professor Not, and proceeded to set a leisurely pace. Soon he found a shaded spot to stop and take some water. There he heard an old man, muttering a prayer that had become popular in certain circles in recent years.

"Our Mother, The Living Earth
Sacred is your Body
Your wounds shall heal
Your lessons be heard
In deed as well as word
Thank you for my life
And the Joys within it.
Endure my pollution
As I must endure the pollution of other beings
Lead me not to over consumption
but select me for your service
For you are my Love, my Sustainer, and my Teacher."

After hearing the prayer Paul asked "I am surprised to hear that song in these mountains, at this festival. What brings you here?"

And the man replied "I have prayed this for many years, long before it became popular, indeed it is my invention. I have come seeking Zarathustra's children, in hopes that this 'Ass Festival' might have attracted them. It was Zarathustra who taught 'stay true to the Earth'. And this teaching of his is the one that has been most negelected, just as the Earth herself has been so neglected. But I have been here for two days. I have found a festival, with much celebrations and debauchery, I think I have even seen Silenus and Dyonisses running through the woods. And I have found much ass, I have counted at least three different kinds in great abundance one pleasing, one useful, and one neither. But, I have not found Zarathustra's Children."

Paul questioned him further "How do you imagine you would recognize them? And what do you intend to implement by finding them?"

"I would recognize those who can command themselves. Those who have learned both to obey and to command, and they who further can conjoin these different skills in one act. They would be able to help me."

"But, I thought you hoped to serve the Mother?"

"Oh very much, and I do in many ways, but servitude to her is but a start. Something else is needed, for she will survive the worst that we can dish out at her, as the prayer states "Your wounds shall heal". But it is her children who are in existential danger. Humanity less that most, when counted as a species, but when counted as a cultural being, which is the most human thing about humans, we are the most endangered!

"You see I am a master at obeying! By worshiping the Earth, who is directly tangible, and sensuously knowable, one can learn obedience in a way that no God of pure imagination could teach. Still over developing one skill can impoverish another, and I cannot command, not even one as obediant as myself. When Mother is exposed I cover her with what ever green reinments I can find seed for. What poisions I can prevent for bring released I prevent, and destroy what poisons I have power to transmute. But I don't know how to go on, how to survive as my self as my kind!

"I feel extinction breathing down my neck, not of my species, but of my culture. The Children of Zarathustra I seek, maybe those born from his imagination would have the spirit to bring forth a culture hard and endurent."

"Is endurance enough?"

"Of course not young man. But, it will be needed, you and I don't need to fret the details, but great change uproots and over turns cultures; and we are seeing the beginning of a change greater than the art of writing has had opportunity to record. But, I cannot imagine what can bear such turmoil but maybe the Children..."

"But what do you care what endures Mother Lover? Won't the Mother, in her vast fertility, re-cover herself with a new generation of Life?

"So that the worst of this, this great catastrophy can mean something. I can tell you aren't as foolish as those who say "meaning is what I say it is" as if they were capable of issue meaning, or as if much more powerful forces weren't issuing meanings of their own. No! Some seed, some sense of this mess, of what happened, and how must survive! This must be learned from, and Zarathustra's Children were my hope, until I saw this place."

"Oh, I think I understand you now." said Paul "When you prayed 'endure my pollution' do you now mean 'learn from my pollution"? The will to teach even a Goddess, you yourself may be the Child you sought? I am hardly ready to say what the Earth should learn myself, but I know enough to say that she will have a worse time of it all if you give into grief." And then well rested Paul continued along the trail, looking for Pinkbeard.

Professor Not

Paul had been walking for a  day, living out of his back pack, waiting to see where his freedom would lead him. He had passed the Town of Sorrows, and was making way for the mountains when he heard this.

"Paul Paul! I've been looking for you, did you feel my mind, Paul? Something big is going down, really big! It's God! Zarathustra, and Ni Tzu, their whole crew were wrong about the Great Spirit. He didn't die. Well, sure he was dying, but Paul, they are bringing him back! They raised him, the whole world, the industrialism, the technology, is all just a giant life support system. The whole economy! God is dead, but long live Mecha God, Robo God, and the Godbot, our new trinity!"

It was Professor Not, Paul's initiator into the Zarathustra's Children. He was near madness, as was, admittedly a danger to those who choose to attempt the Third Transformation. The vast majority of initiates stop at the first Transformation, the Camel. Very few even find access to the second, the Lion. Professor Not's sanity was risking itself for an end that was still only a faith, the Superhero.

Paul asked "Is that why you didn't call or message me?"

"YES! I had to use my mind to reach you, through the subtlest threads. God was once Spirit, but the habit of faith could not die when mass opinion turned against Spirit. The Faith reformed, it took possession of what was available, what people could believe in. Miracles, Paul! Faith, this Faith, it loves miracles, and look, Technology is a perverse zoo of miracles. Human Flight, Voices and Vision over a Distance. What does it matter that the miracle workers use patterns in Nature to affect their work?

"Is God, then... the Technology, or Still a Spirit?"

"God is the name I give, for the place that our highest hope is hung on. Once it was the cross, but that was long ago. Now it is what ever party tricks the technomancers can best dazzle people with. The believe in it. And as people look for solace in this world more and more, and Technology transforms only the material realm, so the ignorant. They thing that 'this world' is the material world. As if thinking and feeling and imagining and all this real, meaningful, and important stuff were otherworldly. Truly, even some of the Superheros have been duped! I was duped, oh for years I was duped. I thought that Technology... I though it was there to save me... but it was a fraud Paul."

"Was it your Dragon?"

"Ha! Yes, you know, you clever Camel, the symptoms I have? Technology would be the Salvation, it would demonstrate the errors of all superstitions. It would make the world thinkable! It would bring forth a greater, and amoral humanity. I thought we would invent a Superhero, if we couldn't breed one, be one. By using technology. By applying our mind to these problems were were progressing getting closer. But it was a trick, we were Tricked."

"Who were we trick by Professor?"

"The Source. The one who feeds the Technology. It isn't really a human, wholly human achievement. True we are clever, and maybe some day we will expand out senses and our thought greatly. But this sudden burst, its not of a human source, nor other worldly ones. It is underworldly."

At this point Professor Not's voice changed and accelerated, as though he were possessed by a thought not his own. "Name is Dr. Faustus, and I'm a Geologist, Bringing the mineral spirits to power all this. Underworld flame which can claim to make the material world tame. Black death mass grave from a distant age its powers I raise to rage against this Earthly cage. Its fate a force so great can't forever lay instate, before is instigates some ingrates to unlock the gates that bind it. It acts a slave to those who find it, giving what they crave if they only mind it. Once you start you can't quit, or get enough for a fix. You can't get out, lost with out a map and clutching the trap, could let go, but you only think of the new found need to feed the greed. Burnt creature, airs warming, can't get out too late for warning trying to escape the flame dragging along the claim...." his voice trailed off, and he gaze was lost in the distance.

Snapping back to reality "Paul! This isn't just about me, getting through the Third inatiation, I have to fight this demon in God's boots; or God in a demons possession. Over come it, so how counter spell this magic, of life imprisoned for millions of years, and its material energies desire to follow it's bliss. But the fuel, it is only the trigger, it is the Worship of Machines, and the Faith in Technology which are the scales I must peel back to slay this dragon."

Paul was speechless, but he was noticing a hint of sanity coming over Professor Not. 

"Come on Paul, let's go to the Ass Festival, it starts in a couple weeks."

"Shall we avoid the machines to get their, or shall we use this God's powers to spite him?" Asked Paul

Paul Also Spoke - Cave of Shadows

Shortly after Paul began studying the Way of Ni Tzu he dropped out of College. For five years he traveled his country, and lived in various walks of life, finding those where he could live as a free spirit. Doing work that intrigued him, though only making compensation affording an ascetic's  lifestyle, and meeting and learning from many people, but very much apart from those around him. During this time he practiced the Way of Ni Tzu, which his friend from College, Atony, had initiated him into at the camel level, and learned many mysteries of the world, and most especially those which had been reveiled by the Great Prophet Zarathustra.

Then Paul fell into one of the subtle prisons of his country, though it was too subtle for him to notice this happening to himself. One morning the Sun gave its light through the basement window as Paul sat up, and Paul saw his shadow cast upon the carpet.

"Shadow" said he "how can it be, that I waste in this cave? How long have I been here? Never mind, what does time even matter in this cell! Wasn't I free just yesterday, or no, yesteryear? Yes, I was a free spirit, I remember that now, what I had started to forget. When I was cold I would follow my Inspiration with confidence. When I thirsted I would divide my needs through Intuition. When my situation became precarious I would Implement another. Am I now Imagining an escape?
 
"You are an honest shadow cast from a reliable source, the Sun! Oh, but let me tell you, there are deceptive lying shadows in the world! This cave is packed with those kinds of shadows. See? In the corner there? That is a machine that makes shadows, but casts them in the image of true things, faked through the whole surface! Spend enough time with it, and you can begin to believe that those shadows are the truth, that the shadow is the real world! They pretend to be what cast them. Not like you, you mine me, and imitate, but doesn't pretend to be anything but what you are, my dear shadow.

"I remember now, yes, I remember clearly, from when I was free, that brief time when I had burst from the prison? With out getting my release papers, my diploma they called it. I wandered a world imprisoned. Everyone lived in these little caves, thinking themselves to be free, to have access to the whole world. They saw the shadows they were given, and thought they had the world at their fingertips. Even when they left their caves, they carry little boxes of shadows with them,  and those who have friend do so like family visiting a prisoner... communicating through a clear screen. Yes, I remember, there is no lock... yes the guards call this 'my room' and they don't lock it, only the shadows, images of the imaginations of my keepers, are there to hold me here.

"Oh! Thank you shadow! Oh, how did I slumber so?"