The Time Traveling Teacher

Here I was again. Stuck back in the past—without any money no less. Don’t get me wrong. I love the whole time traveling bit. It’s my chosen profession after all. But I can’t ever take any modern conveniences with me. Not that I care so much about that. I don’t need to be transported from one spot to another in a blink of an

eye. I do have two perfectly good legs that I can use to get me from one place to another. Moreover, I don’t need to close my eyes and simply think of what kind of meal I want and then it magically appears. That’s what grocery stores are for. It’s a fun adventure having to do things “the hard way,” because it gets me in touch with my roots—that primordial sense of self that I can tap into while cooking a good breakfast. I don’t get to cook at home, so I make sure to have fun when I am doing it here. I mean, it truly is awe inspiring that I can create a fantastic meal with my bare hands and a few rudimentary tools. I know that the people of this time usually just rush around from one thing to the next without taking a moment to connect with the present. It’s a shame really. They don’t know what they are missing. I see cooking a meal as yet another form of creation. We are creating our reality all the time, and this is just one small example of how we can do it.

That being said, what I miss most is the clean air of my time. My asthma acts up like you wouldn’t believe back here. If I land anywhere in between the 20^th and 21^st centuries, where automobiles are as plentiful as ants on a candy bar at a picnic, and where corporations blow out toxic waste in the air with their non-holistic factories, I have a tough time breathing. The cars and the factories aren't even the worst of it. What is, are all the cows. Not that cows are bad. They are lovely. Cows are one of the great creations of the Divine. If they were left alone, they wouldn’t be a problem at all.

It’s just the way humans of this time frame treat them that is the issue. They cut down trees in the Amazon—the trees we need so badly to breathe, no matter where we happen to reside on this big blue ball—in order to have more cows for human consumption. So the trees are being knocked down, which is not a good thing, and to add gasoline to the already exploding fire, the mass quantity of cattle is not in harmony with the Earth because of their own gas (literally their farts). The gas these creatures cause at alarming numbers in this period of time is the primary culprit in the breakdown of the ozone layer, causing air quality chaos. I mean really, when will these people learn?

Of course, I already know the answer. I am from the future. The truth is they are starting to learn now. People are beginning to wake up. But for those who have decided to go green (that’s what they call it in this century and I may as well use the local vernacular), they have an uphill battle to fight. The corporations, which are the behind the scenes de facto rulers of the world, are trying desperately to hold onto what they know. And what they know is power, corruption and the patriarchal energy that they are fervently trying to cling onto.

So to numb people by the masses, the corporations stuff the general population with endless amounts of prescription medication that not only fills up the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, most people have their overflow shoved in the kitchen where an entire cupboard is dedicated to their habits as well. It's crazy.

It's not just pills, either, but the food is also an issue back here. These corporations genetically modify their food—like that could possibly ever be a good thing. Plus, they lace it all with poisonous pesticides, and expect the population to eat this garbage—and they do! It's all sold to the public under the guise that mass food production is feeding the poor, but all they are really doing is lining their own pockets with more dollars. Everyone buys into what the news (that are owned by the corporations who are selling this stuff) tells them. Eat it! It’s good for you! Don’t they realize that ‘cide’ in all the cides like pesticide and herbicide means murder? If they can murder a bug, they can certainly murder a human. It just might take longer. A lot longer. So, we get sick and require all the pharmaceuticals, owned by these companies that all want to make a dime. It’s a racket.

Eventually, humanity will go back to the old ways and remember to live holistically. And they are starting to do so now. But it will be some time before the whole planet gets in on the act. As long as we don’t screw with the timeline too much, we’ll make it. But time is funny. Different streams are happening all around us. One small snap of the wrong branch and the whole chronological tree can collapse.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The real reason it’s so tough being in this particular time, is that I can’t take any money with me. I always land broke. And in this time, when cash is king, it’s a little tough to take. We don’t have to deal with currency where I come from. Everything is taken care of. I think my ancestors got the idea from Star Trek. Sure people wrote about socialism in their various manifestos long before Gene Roddenberry came up with his sci-fi ideological world. But those works initially led to communism, and fascism. Those are hardly what I or anyone else who has an ounce of sanity would call holistic. Star Trek, on the other hand, showed how a world could be without having to fight for money to get to the top. If one wants to be an artist, they can be an artist. If one wants to be a captain of a ship, they have an opportunity for that too. Certainly one needs to be qualified and they have to work for it, but a person’s socio-economic situation will not get in the way, because there isn’t one keeping the people away from their passion.

That’s where I live. In that way it is like Star Trek. That's probably why I have connected so deeply with this show. I either watch the various shows and movies on TV back in the past or I download them into my mind in the future. Either way works for me. They are fun and right up my alley. We may not have phasers and photon torpedoes, but we have pretty nice lives, like they do on those shows. Fair. Equal. And good.

But here, in 2016, I have to do a little suffering. If I want to eat, I have to get a job! I mean, what am I really qualified to do in this time? I can’t exactly walk in and say to a potential employer that I have a Neo-Metaphysics Doctorate with a specialty in Chrono-Manipulation and Readjustment from the University of Parisian Holistic Studies and that I graduated in the year 2973. That is certainly not going to fly. While this may be a highly prized study in my time, these people would laugh in my face.

I could however work in what they, in this time, call retail. I don’t like it very much. It’s hard on the body to stand on these ridiculously hard floors all day. Especially since I don’t have a body alignment manipulator with me. I just have to stick to the basics and do some yoga that I learned from a guru in India during the 1940’s when I was studying Ghandi. Back issues aside, I am pretty good with working with clients. And when I say pretty good, I mean I am beyond just good. I am over the top fantastic. After working two weeks in my latest position, a customer said I deserved a big raise. Well, hallelujah to that, brother!

Okay, so a raise probably wasn’t going to come. At least not yet, anyway. And hopefully I won’t have to be here in a year when raise time approaches to find out if I deserve one or not. In fact, it shouldn’t take that long for me to finish what needs to be done. So, I really shouldn't complain. I arrived only four weeks before my mission takes place. I needed to be here early to get a lay of the land. And the lay of the land included getting to know the habits of one entry level manager. She was my mission. I had to keep her alive past her initial date of departure.

You see we have two scenarios that can and do take place along different time streams. She dies and her great-great-granddaughter is never born and on another stream she lives and everything is honky dorey. The only problem is that I don’t like this woman very much. In fact, she is a pain in my…well, in the place on the body where the sun usually doesn’t shine. You get the point. This chick is actually down right mean! But if she doesn’t live, then there will be no great-great-granddaughter. And we need her. She is the one who ends the war between the humans living on Mars and those living on the Moon. Without that, the rest can’t unfold.

So, yea, I am stuck with having to save the mean girl.

Here’s the thing with her. She was one of the people who trained me. I am not sure why she was given this honor. She frankly sucked at it—big time. The first person to train us was very good. Organized with a capital O. He let us take notes. He let us ask questions. He was good. As for the second person who trained us, I connected with her quite easily. It’s not that we socialized or anything. There wasn’t going to be time for me to connect with her on that level. But every time I was around her I wanted to smile. She just had that sort of radiance about her. Her inner light could be felt by all, whether they realized that is what was happening or not. I did. And she had a good vibration that I wanted to be around.

But Mean Girl, she was a different story. She read her notes to us in a monotonous way. When people read like that I think of the classic film, even by 2016 terms, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, where the teacher spouts off, “Bueller, Bueller, Bueller…” over and over again with the same inflection. It’s funny in terms of a movie. It’s mind-numbingly boring when you are in the midst of an eight hour training.

Not only that, I am a visual learner. In my time, we are all allowed to learn in our own way. We don’t have do it the way the teacher necessarily wants us to do it. We are here to learn in the best way possible that works for us. I need to “see” my notes to be able to get it—particularly when the material is being instructed in such a monotonous way where it’s nearly impossible for me to grasp, just by listening.

That would all be well and good, except she kept moving onto the next thing before I had a chance to finish my notes. So, I would miss whole portions of what she was talking about. When I asked her to repeat what she had said because I was taking notes, she didn’t like it one bit. This girl had some serious anger issues that she needed to deal with. That’s where it all started. That’s when she decided to hate me.

Didn’t she realize that I, Lavinia J. Smitten, was about to save her life!

Of course not. I just had to carry on.

Every day we worked together she targeted me. For one thing, I didn’t have very many casual clothes that most people who worked at this store wore. I did have a few dressier things with me, so I ended up wearing those clothes to work. Yep, I was dressed better than everyone else in this establishment, but what's a girl to do? I didn't have the money to go out shopping for more clothes. So, on the days I put on a pair of cute dress slacks, this woman would reprimand me for my attire, because I was wearing tights. Huh? Tights? I don’t even get it. My slacks were Palazzo pants and hardly skin tight. But jumping into this woman’s mind, I could not do. Nor did I want to anyway. I guess she was just jealous that I was overdressed for this jeans wearing environment.

What gets me most is that this company touts that the number one thing is customer service and if you need help with a client, then we should get one of the managers right away. It's supposedly their job to deal with it. Well, I was new, so of course I needed help learning things as I went along. If she was the manager on duty, it was nightmare. She never wanted to help. At best, she would storm over and do the function on her own without showing me how it was done so that I would never learn and would have to ask her again the next time. At the worst, she would just yell at me to figure it out on my own. Really? Thanks a lot, lady.

On one shift, when I had a mere seven minutes left before I had to clock out for the day, I didn’t have a single person in my line. Nor was there a single person to pull from in any of the other lines either—except for the customer service line. I knew that if I didn’t grab the next person, I would be in trouble from the Gestapo at this job, but I also knew, intuitively speaking, that the next customer in line was going to be hell on wheels and I was simply too new to know how to appease her. It was a lose-lose situation, but all I could do was suck it up and help the lady. I approached her and guided her back to my line.

That was when all hell broke loose.

She approached me with her perfectly pressed clothes on. Her hair was cut in a sharp edged bob that was far too dark for her age. Most notably, her golden bangles jangled against each other as she raised her arms in the air to emphasize her point. The customer from hell was only about 5'2, but every inch of her was waiting to reprimand me about something. If I had to guess she must have been in her late sixties and had probably been giving people trouble for most of those sixty-odd years. Okay, I wouldn't know her beyond this moment. Maybe she was just having a bad day. Either way, she was making me have a bad too.

You see, she had a return that was an online return and it was a different kind of return than the ones I had been trained on. The computers at this particular shop du jour were not intuitive in any way, shape or form and it was impossible for me to figure out how to do it on my own. When I asked Mean Girl to help me—and I had to do it several times during this single transaction—she just yelled at me from behind her counter. In the meantime, the customer was flying off the handle because I didn’t know what I was doing, which of course was true. I didn’t know what I was doing. So, in essence, I was sandwiched between two women who were doing their very best to crush me. I was being attacked in surround sound.

Client: "This is ridiculous that they have you working on a Saturday when you are still training! You should not be doing returns! I was first in line and would have been done by now! But because you are doing this it is a disaster! You don't know what you are doing!"

Me: "I apologize for upsetting you," I calmly said.

Client: "You are not upsetting me! I just don't understand why they have someone who needs to be trained working on a Saturday! I should get in another line! You are terrible! You shouldn't be here! Why did you take me out of line! I was first. This is unacceptable."

I turned around from my register to ask for Mean Girl's help. "Can you please show me how to do this?"

She wouldn't move from her spot. She just shouted at me from behind her area. "Oh. My. God. Really? Push enter!"

Me: "I did push enter and it wouldn't work."

Mean Girl: "Press enter!"

I pressed enter in front of her so many times and it still wouldn't work. Did she come over and help me? No. Meanwhile, the client started in on me again.

"What is taking so long!? I am sick of waiting!"

It was hard to not take it personally. And how was I supposed to remain calm and get the job done when this acrimony flew at me from all directions. I just needed to take a breath, but I couldn't find a moment to fit one in there. Usually I didn't have an issue dealing with difficult clients, but this time I just didn't know enough about what I was doing to appease her. Finally, I had had enough. We were supposed to get a manager when things got too hot and heavy. So, that's what I did. I left my register cage and walked over to Mean Girl.

“I need your help with this woman. She is very angry.” 

Mean Girl wouldn’t budge. She just looked at me with an empty stare, before she yelled at me—again.

"Get back to your register!"

That’s when I lost it.

Forget the mission. I am just going to rip this girl’s hair out myself. She is a nightmare. She is not worth saving. She is a ridiculous waste of space. But then there was the small matter of her great-great granddaughter needing to be born.

Argh, Calgon take me away! (Yes, I spent some time in the 1970’s where that commercial was rampant.)

After the customer service debacle, it took me a couple of days for me to cool off. Thankfully, I didn’t have to see Mean Girl during that time. And on my next shift I made sure to ask a seasoned pro how to do an online return so that I would never ever have to go through that again. In the meantime, I had to remember that it wasn’t just about her great-great granddaughter. Mean Girl was a spirit being too. Underneath all her rage, her soul was fighting to get out. She had just buried it under a mound of garbage and she was taking it out on me. And as it turned out, I wasn’t the only one being hit by her wrath.

Four weeks into my assignment, the man my focus was on for this mission walked through the door. The game was afoot. His name was Alborz. It was a good name. It means the highest one. Alborz was of Persian ancestry and unfortunately, at this time, racism was rampant for anyone, particularly males, who were from anywhere in what is currently called The Middle East, because of what happened on September 11^th. But what some people of this time don’t realize is that there are good people and there are bad people in all races. It’s not the race that matters. It’s the individual. And even the so-called bad eggs are still spiritual beings trying to navigate their way through this particular manifestation in human form. All of us have been good guys and all of us have been bad guys, in one lifetime or another, in order to understand the rainbow of emotions and ways of doing things here on Earth. We are all learning. And in this process of studying, we are exposed to the various kinds of energies. It simply is the way of things. But not everyone knows that yet in 2016.

So, this was it. First I had to save Mean Girl and then I had to save Alborz.

He stood in line in front of the counter where Mean Girl was working. Innocuously at first. He just another person waiting to be helped. At 5’10, he wasn’t too short nor was he too tall. He had a nice enough looking face. No pot marks. Not particularly beautiful. Just sort of average. No one would have even bothered to notice him one way or another. But I had a mental picture of him in my head. His photo had been delivered to my brain by way of a sub-atomic transportation device that is the norm in my time. It’s too complicated to explain the ins and outs of how it works, even for me, considering I am not an engineer. I am a time traveling teacher for goodness sake. I just know that you push a button and it is suddenly ‘downloaded’ into my head. Once it's there, I can see a perfectly good likeness of the man who stood about 25 feet away from me now.

At this point, I am too far away to have a conversation with him, so I need to get a little closer. I have to get him at just the right moment or it would all fall apart. He is currently fifth in line. As for me, I continue to inch my way towards him. Any sudden moves and he might freak out. Now he is fourth in line. I am moving closer still. Third. Even closer. Second. First. It’s his turn. Mission control, we have liftoff.

Instead of moving towards the counter, Alborz just stands there a few feet back. He is momentarily frozen. Or maybe he is absorbing the nuances of his nemesis. Her long black hair is pulled away from her face into a pony tail, making every inch of meanness visible on the scowl that seemed permanently plastered in place. Her black eyebrows are in their usual furrowed state. Her mouth is pretty much in the shape of a snarl. If only she’d smile once in a while we could all benefit from seeing her cheek bones more often, but as of yet, I had only seen her smile on one occasion. It was indeed a beautiful smile, which highlighted her flawless tawny skin, but I normally didn't have the pleasure of bearing witness to it. Particularly on this day. On this day there was nothing to smile about.

As the microseconds pressed forward, Mean Girl eventually looks up from her register, presumably to call the next person in line. When she realizes who is in front of her, her scowl turns into pure unadulterated hatred.

“What do you want?” she snidely asks. 

She had been the one to fire Alborz a couple of months ago. So, she was not happy to see him now. The records I have from the future are hazy. I have no idea why this guy was fired. I just know that he couldn’t find a job afterwards, and he had two kids to support. Two kids who were getting skinnier and skinnier by the minute. Alborz was a dad. He wanted to protect them, but he was losing a battle with his mind. And all that led to this current moment that we were all in.

It was a cool enough day, so his wearing a white jacket was not something out of the ordinary. His hands being in his pocket wasn’t something that was out of the ordinary either. However, what came next was anything but ordinary. That’s when he pulled out his .38 Special. Not that I know anything about guns. I don’t like them in any way, shape or form. When an old boyfriend brought an “antique” weapon into my house, I nearly lost it. That was the only fight we ever had. Bring a weapon of any kind into my presence and I am not a happy camper. But I had read the report. So, I knew what it was. It was an old gun that had been his father’s. Or so the report in my head was telling me. By the looks of it, it is hard to tell if this old contraption from 1963 would even work. But I knew. I read that in the report too. It was ancient history for me. 

He raised his right arm parallel with the ground. It was aimed directly at her head. Her scowl didn’t budge. I was rather surprised actually. She didn’t seem scared at all. Just pissed off like she usually is.

The gathering crowd falls immediately into a panic. Chaos erupts as the shoppers begin to scream and flee into all directions. There are only three of us standing still—Alborz, Mean Girl and me. We are the anchors in this room of pandemonium. It is like watching a bumper car ride without all the fun. But that is about to change. Alborz raises the gun towards the ceiling and fires his first shot. I knew this was to come and I also knew that no one on the second floor would be hurt. So, I allowed it to take place. I figured it would calm the scene down. And right now, we need a little calm. 

The warning shot fired its deafening sound, which triggered a blanket of silence in the room. Everyone stops in whatever position they were in. It is odd to see these patrons stuck in mid-position with their arms outstretched, knees bent, and bodies moving forward. It looks a little surreal. Each individual has an undeniable look of fear stamped on their face—with eyes wide open awaiting some sort of doom to occur. With the exception of the naturally occurring trembling that slightly gyrates everyone’s bodies, nobody moves. It’s as though a finger was snapped and time stood still, only it wasn’t a finger—it was Alborz’s gun. 

“Everyone get on the ground and stay quiet. I have some business to attend to. 

"With the crowd under control, he directs both his comments and the gun back to Mean Girl.

“You fired me! I can’t feed my children. So now you’re children are going to suffer by not having their mother. Although they will probably be happier without you!”

She didn’t say a word.

…But I did.

I slowly walked toward the middle of them. No sudden moves. This was a matter of finesse. Finesse I had loads of. With my long blonde hair, fair skin, and confident stride, I started to do my thing.

“Alborz. You don’t want to do this.”

His startled expression said it all. For a moment he was shaken out of his own terror for the act he was about to commit.

“How did you know my name?”

“I know many things. I know that you are a good man. That you have two children who love you. I know that your mother, Farah, wants you to be at peace.”

“How do you know my mother? She has been dead for many years.”

“Her body may have died, but she is still here. Her soul is the real self and I can see her. She is wearing a black hijab and dress. Her hand is around your shoulders. Do you feel it?”

"My mother always wore black."

“I know that. And she is wearing black now. If you take a deep breath and pay attention to your shoulders you will feel her presence.”

He did what I asked. His weapon was still pointed at Mean Girl, but he focuses on my voice. And more importantly he focuses on his shoulders. His concentration is visceral. His eyes light up in recognition—in recognition of a feeling that he remembers from long ago. He was a child when he lost his mother. For him, she had been gone many years. For her, it was a blip in the space-time continuum that really didn’t exist. She never aged. She just observed and held out an arm in comfort to her son.

He could now feel it. Her energy flowed inside his shoulders.

“How are you doing this? How do you know?”

“I am what you would call an advanced meditator. Because of this, I am able to see many things that others of this time may not see. She wants you to be at peace. She wants you to know that all is well.”

“It doesn’t feel well. My kids are hungry!”

“I know. I understand. You want to protect your kids, just like your mom wants to protect you now. You see, I know what’s going to happen. And so does your mother. If this thing escalates the police are going to storm the store and they will get you. It will take three and half minutes for you to die as the bullet rips through your heart. You will bleed out—in agony. Your kids will no longer have a father. And that is not the worst of it. For your crime, your soul will immediately be reborn. It is the way of things. There is no stopping to rest. It’s an automatic reboot. And the lesson that you did not learn in this lifetime will have to be re-taught to you again for another round. If you don’t get it the next time, it will go on and on like that, sometimes for centuries. Is that what you want?”

I didn’t let him respond before I carried on.

“Or you can use this moment as an opportunity to break down this particular classroom. It can be a done deal right now. Never to be taught again. When eventually it is your time to depart from this body, you can go to Paradise (Heaven) and rest for a bit. You can enjoy yourself for a job well done.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“No? Your name is Alborz Benham Akhtar. Your mother chose your given names Alborz meaning highest one and Benham meaning man of honor. She loved you. She wanted you to do the highest and most honorable things in your life…You were born on a surprisingly warm day in October of 1963. Your mother tells me she used to tell you that it was 92 degrees on that day, with an overbearing amount of humidity thrown in. She needed a cold washcloth to ward of the sweat…Furthermore, you graduated from John Glenn High School in 1981, but before moving to the United States you lived in a small town outside of Khalhal. Your father was an engineer and he was an incessant worrier. Things were bad in the old country, so it’s understandable. He always carried a gun with him—the one you have in your hand. The one that you have never used until a few minutes ago when you shot the bullet into the ceiling.”

“How do you know these things?”

“I know many things. I know, for example, that while Mean Girl is not the nicest of people I will protect her. Yes, I call her Mean Girl. She has been targeting me since the moment she met me. She pretty much hates me. However, she is still a spirit being. Somewhere underneath her incessant bullying, she is a soul that is trying to remember who she is, just like the rest of us. Her rage is simply mirroring the rage within myself. She is simply showing me the part of me that I don't like within myself. It’s sometimes hard for me to remember that, because even though I know better, I still manage to get wrapped inside my ego—and the ego is all about fear. But once I calm down, I remember that she is like the rest of us, just trying to figure her way through her path. In fact she is my teacher. She is helping to remind me that even though she seems like a cruel jerk that I can empathize with her plight. I have an opportunity to feel compassion for her, even though she is not very nice to me. So, in that way my soul is jumping up and down for the lesson and it’s taken me until this very second for my ego to catch up.”

“You can’t stop me!”

“Even if you manage to kill this body of mine to get to her, my soul will still be here. And then I won’t be hampered by my body. Our bodies are limiting, but I am already very powerful and will have access to all my abilities once this body is gone. Either way, you will not be able to harm her. I will protect her at all costs.”

He seemed to take in my words for a minute. Alborz was paying attention.

“If, however, you put your weapon down. You will pass the first test. Yes, you will have to go to prison, but you can view that as an opportunity to get in touch with the Divine. You can see it as an opportunity to really connect with the meaning of your very own names. And most importantly you won’t have to do this again the next time around.”

“Is that true?  

“Yes. I promise. The thing is, I am not only here for Mean Girl. I am here for you.”

I edged my way closer to him. At this point the gun was only inches away from my own chest.

“The decision is yours.”

Time stood still. No one knew what would happen next—not even me. However, after an interminable amount of time, my fear switched off. That was when the arm that was attached to the gun moved from an elevated position down to the side of Alborz’s body. The first part of my mission was over. I just needed to help him a little further. 

Everyone surrounding us is still too stunned to move. It is just him and me now. Everyone else fades into the background of our perception. I put the negotiator in me away. It is time to put my teaching cap on. I need to show him how to meditate so that he can use it as a tool for later on. I put my hand flat on his chest. He didn’t flinch. He accepted it as though it was the most normal thing on Earth. I begin to guide him with my voice, which moves from being direct, to being softer, slightly more ethereal. Not a lot, but enough to make him want to dive into the depths of my tone.

“Breathe consciously. Breathe into the heart space. Not just the heart of the physical being, but the heart of your soul. Really feel the energy of your breath move from outside your body and into your mouth, down to your lungs. Take these breaths honoring this gift from the Divine. With each breath we are able to connect that much more with all that is. Now close your eyes and get in touch with the breath at an even deeper level."

His breathing becomes more intentional. His mind begins to open to the wonders of his true self, and I am experiencing what he is experiencing right along with him. I could now feel what he felt. I could now see what he saw. Our minds are connected. 

Initially, he gazes upon his mother. Where once he could not see her, now she was as clear as day. She is here with him and he could finally bear witness to the visage he had missed for so many years. She gently caresses his face. 

“I love you,” she said. 

“I love you too, mâmân.” 

“I know,” she said with a smile. Then, she slowly disappears. 

He is no longer sad. He knew she was still here somewhere. He just decided to move with the flow of the moment. And in the moment, he gazed upon the vastness of the universe. He saw the stars and the galaxies. He felt connected to me and to all that is, just like I felt connected to him and to all that is.

Time had stopped for us. Time was meaningless. 

I guided him through his first meditation, all while thirty or forty bystanders watched us. The police showed up in what seemed like hours, but in reality it was a mere seven and half minutes into the meditation. As they stormed into the room, the part of me that was still there in the room connected with my physical body. I raised my hand in the air, in order to signify that they should halt in their tracks. They didn’t have to pay attention to my gesture. But they did. They let me finish. 

“It’s time to come back now, Alborz. Slowly allow yourself to move back through the galaxies, back into our solar system, back to planet Earth, into this city, this building and now into your body. Feel your feet touching the floor. Feel your presence on Mother Earth. When you are ready, come back to the present moment. 

Alborz opened his brown eyes that were so dark they were nearly black. He looked directly into my own eyes. Even though we were no longer in the trance state, for these brief few seconds we could both still feel eternity—a connection with the goodness in the universe. A connection with the Divine.

“It will be okay. Just remember this day. Remember it always. Remember who you truly are. Remember to connect.” 

His soul knew it was true, but his eyes still yearned for more of this connection. 

“I will come visit you. I will help you through this.”

As the words from my last sentence wrapped up, the police officer places Alborz’s hands behind his back and slips the cuffs around his wrists. The officer isn’t violent. He isn’t cruel in anyway. Perhaps the meditation calmed him down too. He wraps his hand gently around Alborz’s left arm and guides him out of the store, but not before Alborz looks back at me one last time. We already had a connection. Words were no longer needed. I reminded him with my eyes, that it would all be okay. It would be after all. Mean Girl’s great-great granddaughter would be born. But that’s not even what I meant. I would come visit him a few times while he was in jail. I would help guide him on his path. Only as much as he wanted, of course. But I would honor my word. I would show up.

After he was gone, everyone remaining in the room let out a collective sigh. I suppose the crowd had been unintentionally holding their breath. But now they were moving back into the groove of normalcy. Slowly, each person moved from the floor to a standing position.

"Where did you learn Farsi?" the store manager asked me. He was Persian himself and understood the language.

"I don't speak Farsi."

He looked at me quizzically. "Yes. You do,"

I scanned the room with my eyes as everyone else that stood before me nodded their heads in the affirmative. I guess I was speaking Farsi and didn't even know it.

"Parseltongue," I said.

"Huh?"

"Harry Potter spoke Parseltongue, or snake language, and didn't realize it until it was pointed out to him. He thought he was speaking English. Well, I thought I was speaking English too. I really don't speak Farsi, but maybe it was downloaded to me so that I could have this conversation with Alborz. I certainly don't think I could come up with the words on my own now. Or maybe it has to do with adrenaline. Maybe my adrenaline rushing prompted me to remember whatever language I needed to pull up to make this situation work. The thing is I just don't know."

I guess the reader might be surprised that a person from 900 plus years into the future would know anything about J.K. Rowling's books, but from where I come she is still a hit. The Harry Potter series has sold more than anything Shakespeare ever wrote. She even bypassed Agatha Christie. Billions and billions of readers have perused through her pages. Sure, her books have been translated into modern English (not to mention all the other languages on the planet), but I prefer to read her original script. I am a historian, after all, and it helps me to keep my old English current when I need to travel to this time.

“Who are you?” It was one last question from the manager. One last question from this time.

“I am one who always steps in to help. But my time here is complete. It is time for me to go now. I thank you for the opportunity to work here. I won’t be needing my check. You can just donate it to Alborz’s kids. Maybe you can also figure out a way to help them. They will need it over these next several months.”

Before I left, Mean Girl approached me. She struggled to find the words, but eventually they came.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t mention it. And thank you.”

I couldn’t help but smile. And then a miracle happened. She smiled back. The tension between us washed away just like that. It had all been worth it. That smile was the only reward I needed. 

My smile felt like a permanent fixture. I gazed around the room to all the people who shared this experience with me. I acknowledged each individual by looking into their eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul and I wanted to share even a fraction of a second with each of theirs. This soul gazing was my farewell. When I was done I turned to walk out the door of the building. And when it was safe, I made my way home. 

The end.