Stephen Beam

BALAAM, THE GRAY PROPHET

Foreword

The ancient biblical story of Balaam and his talking donkey unfolds once again in a distant apocalyptic future. Here, gaps are filled, details inserted, and spiritual mysteries revealed.

The world finally broke, shattering into small autonomous units. Small tribal communities, not nations, composed the world’s social order. Life was simplified, not by plan, but by necessity. The unbearable complexity and multitude of laws that governed nearly every aspect of human behavior were enforced by tyrannical, warring states. This situation eventually brought down the world. The social monster consumed itself. The wisdom humankind struggled so hard to win, was lost. Now the world must start anew and rediscover timeless truths. Ancient wisdom was once again new.

In the circle of time, God used unlikely men and women to accomplish His ends. Balaam the prophet was one of them. He was broken man, yet he was chosen to be an instrument of the Lord, furthering the divine plan in a decaying world. Balaam was God’s instrument — despite himself.

Chapter 1: First Meeting

The Pethor community grew up around a small river that held just enough water to sustain the town’s population. Mickey entered the Pethor Bar that broiled beneath the relentless desert sun. Temporarily blinded, it took awhile for his eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. When they did, he pitied poor Pethor. If this was the best watering hole they had, it wouldn’t help his depression any. Perhaps a few shots of the locally fermented grain would numb his sour attitude.

He’d been sent here by Balak, Chief of Moab, to meet with the legendary prophet Balaam: a man of strong mojo, a man with the power to bless and to curse. Mickey scratched his stubbled chin while deep in thought. His boss was strangely gullible for a man who’d risen so high and fast in the social ranks. Balak was either a charming innocent or a manipulative con. In either case, he had the charisma to win over Moab, a land of great wealth. Mickey never had the charm to rise very high in the ranks. He was low on the rung amongst Balak’s personal elite. He was in Pethor because Balak knew he was hungry, willing to twist arms and bash heads on the cheap. But Balak wasn’t a cheapskate. He was just careful.

Mickey sat down on an oddly misshapen barstool. The round vinyl seat didn’t properly accommodate his butt, and from the looks of it, nobody else’s either. The bar counter was a rough-hewn rectangle of granite. Blue light-emitting diodes dotted its surface. These LEDs, along with a few hanging light strings, were the bar’s main source of illumination. The ceiling and the walls were corrugated tin. Concrete pillars were placed in the corners and midpoint along the walls. The smoky atmosphere was gray, muting the already dim light. This bleak interior was maintained by malfunctioning troops of nanobots, badly in need of reprogramming, leaving in their wake objects twisted and malformed.

The male patrons wore dark clothing designed to keep sunlight out. It made them blend with the smoke filled air. The few women patrons were obviously prostitutes, naked but for thin tight shorts. They displayed their large breasts and long legs, enhanced by reconfigured DNA. Most of them worked as temple prostitutes, serving the local priests by acting out ordained erotic rituals. Mickey’s congregation back in Moab had its share of temple prostitutes too. But these Pethor whores were more pitiful than sexy. He avoided eye contact with them as best he could. Drinking local whiskey and smoking homegrown mutant tobacco were the unifying factors that blended religious virtues and hedonism among the people of Pethor.

Mickey scanned the room, occasionally glancing at the picture of Balaam he kept on his cellphone. He saw no matching faces yet. He walked over to an ancient jukebox. On first glance, the jukebox was pristine. On second glance, the entire surface was pitted with tiny holes. A handwritten sign said this machine was modified to work with spoken commands. Mickey leaned in close and spoke to the shiny brass, chrome, and glass device. “Play  trance music. Something extremely hypnotic.” He doubted the music would actually elevate his mood, but figured it was worth a shot.

The barroom door swung open. Sunlight filled the room and sliced through the smoke filled air, a toxic curtain that seemed parted by the very hand of God. But instead of revealing heavenly mansions of light, a dark figure stood silhouetted in the glare of the open doorway. Mickey squinted at the man, trying to make out his features.

The dark figure looked across the room, spotted Mickey, and walked over to sit on the empty barstool next to him. All the while he stared silently into Mickey’s eyes. He knew who Mickey was, even though he’d never seen his face before, either in flesh or photo. Balaam had seen Mickey in his dreams, dreams sent by the Lord Almighty. A holy light danced inside Balaam’s thoughts unbidden: the very light of YHWH, creator of dreams and dreams within dreams. The Lord’s divine presence made sleep for Balaam almost irrelevant. It no longer mattered much if he was sleeping or awake. Day and night blended together inside him. His inner life had become his outer.

Mickey considered leaping from his barstool and running back home to Moab. The guy sitting next to him was truly unnerving, but he needed the extra coin this gig would bring. The creep wore a gray hoodie that cast his face in shadows, much deeper and darker than any shadow in the barroom. Mickey glanced at the picture of Balaam on his cellphone, though he really didn’t need to. He knew who this creep was, even without clearly seeing his face. Silence became a palpable presence between them, turning into a challenge. Who would be first to speak? Who would lay out their agenda and break the stare-down?

It was the dark hooded figure that first broke the silence. He spoke only one word. A word Mickey had never heard before. “YHWH,” Balaam said, pronouncing it with such precision and reverence it frightened Mickey.

“What?” Mickey asked. A shiver ran from his toes to the top of his head. Involuntary muscle contractions shook him so hard they threatened to topple him from the barstool. What the hell just happened? How could a single spoken word thrust him so far out of his familiar reality? He felt dizzy, but, strangely enough, his depression lifted a little. Maybe the distraction from Balaam’s strange word had helped him, a foretaste of the prophet’s mojo. He called for the bartender, who’s badge stated he was also the owner, to pour him a shot of house whiskey.

Balaam spoke again from under the darkness of his hood, “The word I spoke was YHWH, which is God’s name. He is creator of heaven and the heaven of heavens, and everything in them. Know this: I only do that which the Lord commands me. So tell me, what does Balak want?”

After slamming the whiskey down his throat, Mickey gestured to the bartender for another.

The bartender refilled Mickey’s glass and asked, “Do you want to keep the bottle?”

“Why not?” If he was going to drink medicinally to soothe his nerves, it was best to keep the bottle handy. The burn of alcohol comforted him, promising quick relief. Its heat ran from gut to head and loosened his tongue. “Have some whiskey, Balaam.”

From beneath his woolen hood, Balaam’s eyes were the only facial feature visible. A subtle twinkle flashed across his pupils. Balaam said, “Sounds good. Bartender, another glass please.”

Quickly Mickey formulated a plan: get Balaam a little high. Loosen him up a bit. That was always good diplomacy. Mickey poured the whiskey into Balaam’s glass. This was going to be an easy job. “Cheers,” Mickey said, and knocked glasses with him.

One of the harlots came over to Balaam and touched his chest with a bare breast. She wrapped her right arm around his shoulder and put her left hand on his thigh, an attempt to ply him for drinks. Mickey saw this and it angered him. He had to get rid of her. “This is a private party babe. Hit up someone else.”

“Maybe mystery man doesn’t want me to leave,” she said.

Balaam didn’t make any move to push her away. Instead, he raised the shot of whiskey to his lips, sniffed its aroma, then gave it a casual sip rather than downing it all at once. He asked Mickey, “What does Balak want of me? You haven’t yet said.”

“You already know,” Mickey said nervously, upset by the harlot’s intrusion. “Somehow you already know more than you should.” To be effective, Mickey needed to keep cool. The vibe that now surrounded them wasn’t going in his favor.

“The Lord speaks to me,” Balaam said, and finished his glass. He pushed it towards Mickey for a refill. The harlot kept rubbing Balaam’s thigh, but he continued to ignore her.

“I believe you,” Mickey said, and refilled Balaam’s glass while giving the whore his most stern look. It did no good. She didn’t have the social grace to leave where she wasn’t wanted. Mickey shook his head in disgust, reached inside his pocket, grabbed the gold coins offered by both Moab and Midian as down payment on Balaam’s diviner fee. He laid them on the counter and said, “You’re a legend when it comes to the mojo of blessing and cursing. We need your help. ”

“What exactly do you want of me?” Balaam asked, continuing to ignore the harlot’s annoying advances.

“The Sons of Israel lay waste to any domain their god tells them to, slaughtering anyone and anything standing in their way, be it man, woman, child, animal or plant. Balak knows he can’t stand against this gang. He’s scared, and he needs your help. Come with me to Moab and lay a curse on the Sons of Israel. Make them weak and helpless.” Mickey pushed the coins a little closer to Balaam and added, “These gold coins are a mere pittance — a gesture of good faith. The real money’s waiting in Moab when you finish the job.”

The harlot moved from Balaam’s side to reach for the coins on the counter. Mickey grabbed her wrist, twisted it nearly to the breaking point, then shoved her away. She stumbled and nearly fell but managed to remain upright. She rubbed her wrist and said, “Alright. No need to get rough.” She walked off, fading into the smoky darkness.

Balaam swept the gold coins towards himself, counted them, then put them inside his hoodie’s large front pouch. In a softly cryptic tone, he said, “You have others with you. They sit at a nearby table… watching. I want all of you to stay the night in Pethor. Tonight, the Lord will visit me in a dream. In the morning, I’ll reveal to you what He said. But this one thing you must understand: I can’t say other than what the Lord says.”

Where Mickey had originally laid the coins on the counter, it now transformed from rough granite into glossy marble. The nanobot maintenance crew was acting on damaged code, re-molecularizing the countertop. The bartender walked over to this zone of morphing and whacked it hard with the palm of his hand. The struck surface rippled concentrically outward like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. A few seconds later it solidified, returning to its original rough granite finish.

Mickey and Balaam watched the bartender with concern. Nanobots can quickly become dangerous and difficult to remove after they malfunction. Even an EMF blaster might fail to stop them once they go rogue — especially the cheap ones. They tend to lack proper human safety code.

“Shit!” The bartender shouted out in pain. He quickly pulled his hand away from the counter. His fingers rapidly grew twice their normal length and thickness, like overinflated balloons ready to burst. He shook his hand violently, a vain attempt to rid himself of the microscopic machines.

“I’ll call emergency,” Mickey said, and woke his cell phone and tapped the screen. The phone intelligently assessed their situation and location and beamed a message for help. A few minutes later the front door burst open, flooding the bar with light. The emergency team, three men wearing shiny white jumpsuits and transparent bubble helmets, entered the bar. They carried EMF blaster guns that automatically sensed and marked targets. The team cautiously approached the bartender and signaled to those nearby to step away. Mickey and Balaam left their barstools and walked towards the exit.

The emergency team fired their blasters. Powerful electromagnetic radiation poured over the countertop where the morphing had occurred. The bartender, grimacing in pain, yelled out, “All these ‘bots are bad. Go ahead. Wipe everything.” Then he turned to the customers and said, “Everybody leave. We’ll reopen tomorrow.” He knew the bar should have been sterilized at the first sign of renegade nanobots, but even cheap nanobots weren’t cheap. No nanobot came with a warranty, even the expensive ones. A new batch would have cost a fortune.

“Hold out your hand,” one of the emergency team members commanded the bartender. Wincing in pain, the bartender held out his infected hand. The emergency team member made an adjustment to his EMF blaster, took aim at the nanobot malformed hand, and pulled the trigger. The healing nanobots were released after the sterilization process, and three minutes later the bartender’s hand was restored to normal.

Balaam and Mickey now stood outside in the shade of the bar’s front porch. Mickey’s partners from Moab and Midian joined them outside. The other bar patrons went home. Since there were no other bars in Pethor, today’s social imbibing of bottled bliss had ended.

Mickey said to his fellow emissaries, “Let’s find a motel. We’ll wait and hear what Balaam has to say when we meet here in the morning.”

Balaam nodded approval beneath his hoodie. Mickey and his crew took off down the street to check out cheap motels.

Balaam untied Eeayore from the fire hydrant, gave her a pat on the back, then mounted her. A donkey wasn’t the normal mode of transportation here in Pethor, but it made sense for him. She’d been a gift from a cousin on his father’s side. What was meant as a joke turned into a blessing. The lot next to Balaam’s house was a grass covered field where Eeayore grazed to her heart’s content. Free fuel forever.

Chapter 2: God’s Dream

Dusk turned Balaam’s small white home a deep orange. He dismounted Eeayore and took her to graze in the field next door before he went inside. She appeared to gaze at Balaam warmly, but he refused in anthropomorphizing his pet donkey. The light in her eyes merely reflected his own — a mental projection — much like looking in a mirror. Eeayore was but a warm blooded beast, intelligent, but without true self awareness.

His house was small, the inside laid out studio style. It was perfect for a lone man like himself. One main room and a bathroom, that’s all he really needed. He cooked meals on an old hotplate atop his dresser. His single bed was small, yet it took up nearly a third of the floorspace. On the side opposite his bed was an old couch. This was where he relaxed, ate, and read while resting his feet atop an old wooden coffee table.

There were no maintenance nanobots in his house. Things were left to deteriorate at their own natural pace. Maintenance nanobots were subject to decay just as all things material were. As a mortal made of dust, he felt entropy settling into his bones. He was decaying along with the earth. His old flesh complained from morning to night. Relief came only when YHWH broke through the inertia of matter and touched his mind. The result was a flood of light across his mental landscape. YHWH brought him the big dream, the dream of an eternally holy  universe where decay didn’t exist.

Balaam pulled open the top drawer of his old dresser. He kept canned food in there, consisting mainly of pork and beans. That’s been his favorite food for most of his life. He did a quick inventory, noting he had quite a few cans left. Now, with the new gold coins in his pocket, he could splurge and buy something a bit more exotic. A steak perhaps? He could afford to indulge in a few dreams of the flesh. Maybe even spend the night with a high class harlot, one of the pretty elites from the temple. But he was only joking with himself. He knew such behavior was ungodly.

Despite what others imagined, his special mojo never brought him wealth. It barely paid the mortgage. His spiritual gifts held him back more than anything else. Whenever he transformed into an oracle, it always came back to bite him in the ass. Whether he issued blessings or curses, both were a double-edged sword. When either side of the blade pressed against his skin, he bled.

Balaam pulled the tab and took the lid off the can of pork and beans. He placed the can directly on the hotplate heating element, not bothering to pour the beans in a pot. While waiting for them to warm, he pondered his relationship with the Lord. At times, YHWH would sing the world away, and when He did, visions flooded his mind. The path to the future was a carpet woven in gold, stretching from universe to universe, beyond all temporal horizons. It terrified him. He dreaded prophetic visions. To remain ignorant of the world’s fate was of much greater comfort. When he revealed his prophetic visions to the people, no one doubted their veracity. They were always dead on accurate. And though he’d rather hide these prophecies, he always did what the Lord asked of him.

Why did the Lord bother with him? Why was he chosen to be part of a grand cosmic plan he didn’t understand? YHWH was God to the Sons of Israel, and Balaam wasn’t of that tribe. People in these parts worshipped whatever god their tribe asked them to. Baal was a popular god around here, and he came in various guises, all of them hated by YHWH. YHWH had declared all Baals false gods, and that struck fear in the heart of every Baal worshipper.

The God of the Israelites was most frightening of all the gods. There was no end to His power. When He blessed His followers, He made them invincible. YHWH demanded only one thing in exchange for His blessing: absolute obedience. Obey the laws of YHWH, and you received His blessing. Balaam knew from his dreams that Moab was on the Lord’s list of abominations, but Balaam could do nothing to help, not unless the Lord willed it. The residents of Moab and their neighbors, were afraid. They watched The Sons of Israel draw ever nearer. Angels of death manifesting as bikers. Riding heavy fire breathing motorcycles — steel machines custom designed from ancient data and built by nanobots, running on hydrogen fuel — the very fuel of the sun.

The pork and beans were warm enough. Balaam lifted the can from the hotplate using an oven mitt and spooned beans into his mouth. He was hungry. Tonight, he needed energy. Outwardly, he would appear to be in a very deep sleep. When YHWH willed to invade his dreams, it drained him as thoroughly as if he’d run an uphill marathon. The divine synchronization possessed him completely: his mortal will dissolved into YHWH’s divine will, lost in its unfathomable, infinite density. Occasionally in this visionary state, he was cursed with lucid dreaming. If he could remain calm, he could blast away from it, riding on a blinding stream of light. This took most all his life energy, leaving him clinging desperately to his mortal frame.

He finished the beans and threw the empty can into the recycling bin. Now came the second phase of his visionary ritual, the one he looked forward to most. Though he’d had a few drinks at the bar, this night called for more fortification. The second phase of preparation was drinking precisely four shots of whiskey. This was the magic formula to help him past any lucid dreaming state he might get stuck in. To confront the power of YHWH, and not be in total submission, was a grave error. There were no halfway measures with the Lord. YHWH wanted everything from His followers or nothing. He demanded one-hundred percent of their heart, mind, soul, and strength. Nothing short of that would do.

Balaam undressed and put on his warm, fluffy bathrobe. It was important to be comfortable when contacting YHWH. The less distractions, the better.

He kept bottles of whiskey and drinking glasses in the bottom cabinet drawer. He grabbed an already opened bottle, along with his favorite glass, a shooter, and set them on the cabinet next to the hotplate.

Why God used him as His prophet made no sense. He wasn’t a Son of Israel. There was no lineage, no blood ties that bound him to their tribes. He owned no kosherized motorcycle. The Israelites claimed their Lord to be the one true God, creator of heaven and the heaven of heavens. YHWH was no pretender to the throne like the Baals or Ashtoreth, and Balaam knew this was true, as surely as he ate, drank, and breathed. YHWH was, is, and always will be, the one true God. He lived inside Balaam’s conflicted and warring heart.

There was no savoring the whiskey. With glass filled, he threw his head back and downed the whiskey in one quick move. By the fourth glass, the alcohol had already saturated his brain and softened his world, sweeping away stinging shards of anxiety in preparation for the Lord. He didn’t bother to pull down the comforter and snuggle under it; he flopped on his back against the bed and waited for sleep. It would arrive soon. And with it, the Lord.

Consciousness drained away quickly and quietly. Balaam’s mind, soft and accepting, opened the door for the Lord to enter. YHWH burst through intellect’s doorway, radiating energy, removing the constraints of his neural matrix. Balaam’s mind shot skyward, expanded, and left the world behind, touching heaven’s edge. No longer dreaming — he was the dream. Every consecutive millisecond Balaam was born anew. Once a human being, he was now a particle of thought, unresponsive to material gravity.

The Lord asked, “Who were those men with you at the bar?”

Balaam was sucked down one whirlpool of thought into the next. He said, “Why ask? I know that you know who they are, but I’ll say the words. They were men sent by Balak, Chief of Moab. He fears the Sons of Israel will destroy him and his people. He wants me to curse the Israelites in order to save Moab.”

Luminous columns of spirit rose from whirlpools of intellect that continued to pull Balaam from one vortex to the next, each new vortex more powerful than the last. Stars danced across the night sky. Towering columns of light tunneled past galaxies that swirled amongst glowing fields of plasma. Inward, ever inward, into the realms of the humanly unthinkable. There were limitations embedded within the minds of humankind, and Balaam had reached them.

The dark curtain of space rent in half, revealing billions of star islands spinning kaleidoscopically outwards, each held firmly in the gravitational hand of the Almighty. God, hidden by the very nature of His absoluteness within the stationary center of infinity, revealed of Himself to Balaam all he could assimilate. Before every beginning, past every ending, YHWH reached out in love to Balaam, offering all the truth the prophet could take in.

YHWH then spoke to Balaam: “You shall not go with them to see Balak. You will not curse the Israelites, for they are blessed.”

Abruptly as the flick of a light switch, the vision ended. Balaam sat bolt upright in bed as if tazed in the ass. He looked about the room confused, empty, and temporarily demented. When God severed the divine connection, it was quick and harsh. The glories of heaven were sucked away in an instant, deflating Balaam’s mind like a pin popped balloon. He was a grain of sand, lost amongst trillions of its kind. He’d traveled from the highest golden glories to the  drab gray mundane, all within seconds. Balaam now faced the raw morning. He swung his legs off the bed, managing to stand without falling.

Unlike most people, coffee wasn’t his eye opener. That only came after a drink of whiskey. He poured some whiskey into a glass. He retained enough class not to drink it straight from the bottle. His mind still addled, the visionary dreams shattered his sense of reality for hours after awakening. Balaam held his right hand before his face and examined it, then clenched it into a fist to feel the pressure of skin against skin. It seemed he was still living inside God’s dream, the Lord spontaneously creating everything he was and everything he did. Or was he merely dreaming of the Lord dreaming of him? The heaven of heavens were choreographed within the mind of God: all things were but dreams within dreams, played out inside the circle of time, bound by eternity.

“I’m made in the Lord’s image,” Balaam said aloud to himself. “I dream in my way as the Lord dreams in His; I’m but an infinitesimal nanosecond within His endless and holy dream. If I awaken within His dream, what do I become then?” He heated a tin mug of water on the hotplate and stirred in a teaspoon of instant coffee crystals. Lifting the mug with an oven mitt, he took a long sip. “YHWH never sleeps. He is perpetually awake. That’s why I can’t beat him to the punch.” More alert now, but still hungover from the Lord’s nighttime visit, it was nearly time to meet with Mickey and his associates, as he’d promised.

Dressed in his customary manner, face shadowed beneath the hood of his sweatshirt, he left his house for the field next door. “Eeayore, it’s time to go.” The donkey lifted her head from grazing and approached him, affectionately nudging her master’s shoulder with her nose. Eeayore loved Balaam the best that she could. Blessed with a higher degree of intelligence than most of her kind, she could even sense Balaam’s moods, often adjusting her gate to comfort him. Today, her master’s mood was sour.

Balaam wanted the Balak gig badly. Wanted it more than anything else in the world. Balak was a rich man with a reputation for generosity. If he employed you, and you did the job well, he was a man who was more than fair. Balaam itched to go and use his mojo for Balak. He wanted so much to curse the Sons of Israel and take the prize. He wanted the money, and wanted it badly, but knew the gig wasn’t happening. The Lord’s clear message didn’t allow him any wiggle room.

“There’s not much going on in Pethor for a man of my talents,” Balaam told Eeayore. “Around here, the best thing going’s the whiskey.” He gently mounted Eeayore and scooched around until he found the saddle’s comfort zone. Balaam gave an affectionate slap to Eeayore’s hindquarters, urging her to trot slowly towards the road. This wasn’t going to be a good day. The last thing he wanted to do was tell Mickey what the Lord had told him.

Chapter 3: Bad News

A few customers were gathered outside the Pethor Bar waiting for the door to open. Mickey and his associates arrived with the rest of the early morning crowd. The building had noticeably changed since the nanobot emergency sweep. Many of the nanobots were disabled in the EMF sterilization, but some remained. Their numbers began to multiply a few hours before the bar opened: they had reconfigured their molecular matrix to utilize solar energy. Re-energized, they went on a redecorating rampage.

“What the hell,” Mickey said when the front door opened. From the outside, the building had underwent subtle changes of color and texture. Inside, the drab barroom had totally transformed. The walls were delicately engraved slabs of gold, inlaid with vertical strips of ebony. Round mirrors were strategically embedded in the walls to reflect objects infinitely by pointing at round mirrors on the opposite wall. The floor was covered in extremely plush burgundy carpet. Fluffy white clouds floated randomly near the chrome ceiling. The table legs were tubes of corner swirl silver supporting a giant multifaceted diamond tabletop. The formerly drab Pethor Bar now resembled an elegantly cheesy brothel straining to attain heavenly notes of beauty.

“Is it safe to be in here?” Mickey asked the bartender.

The bartender said nothing. He was obviously no longer compelled to call emergency. He’d grown a beautiful pair of pastel blue wings. They fluttered as he wiped off the countertop. Along with his wings came a new attitude.

The morning customers were confused but undeterred from drinking. The threat from self coded nanobots — hearty survivors of an EMF purge — didn’t scare them from getting drunk. Mickey ordered two bottles of house whiskey for their table. He had a bad feeling while they waited for Balaam. He was almost certain what the prophet was going say, and it wasn’t what his boss wanted to hear. “Let me pour,” Mickey said as he sat down at the table. He filled everyone’s shot glass to the rim.

* * *

Eeayore trotted up to the fire hydrant in front of the bar, her passenger lost in thought. Balaam was contemplating friendships, and how friends often disagree. Everyone had their own a take on the world: viewpoints were individualized by experience, genetics, and beliefs. But with him, things were different. His best friend wasn’t human. His best friend was YHWH, creator of heaven and earth. God’s opinions were manifest as the very universe itself. God’s children had opinions about that universe. But the problem went deeper for Balaam. Balaam was hooked directly to God, and God and he had differing opinions. For Balaam, there was no choice but to give in to God’s opinion.

Balaam dismounted Eeayore and tied her to the fire hydrant. She wouldn’t actually wander off; this was just their little custom. “Like you, Eeayore, I stay tied down,” Balaam said, and patted his donkey’s side. “My life’s orbit is as confined as yours. I’ll forever remain tagged as the prophet who dispenses curses and blessings.” He walked over to the bar door, grabbed the handle and quickly let go. The handle felt warm, alive, and pulsing. He shook off the creepiness and opened the door, surprised by the extreme revamping of the interior. He’d seen the work of malfunctioning nanobots a few times before, but this was unique, an insanely inspired creation.

A low floating cloud was on a collision course with Balaam’s head. His first impulse was to duck, but as it drew near, the smell of cotton candy filled the air. He passed through the cloud unharmed on his way to Mickey’s table. A chair was pulled out and waiting for him. He sat down, hoping the hoodie hid the disappointment on his face.

“I’m assuming you received your instructions last night,” Mickey said. He quickly downed a shot of whiskey, then poured himself another. He filled a glass for Balaam and pushed it across the diamond tabletop towards him.

Balaam made no move to take the drink. He pondered what to say, but failed to come up with the right words to soften the blow. He decided to go with the easy answer, which happened to be the truth. He grabbed his shot glass and tossed the whiskey down his throat. He looked at Mickey, then quickly lowered his head. Without making eye contact with the Moabite delegation, he said, “Go back to your homeland. The Lord has refused to give me permission to go with you.”

Mickey believed there was little chance for a positive response, so the prophet’s announcement came as no surprise to him. His boss, Balak, won’t be happy about the news, but he won’t be discouraged either. He’ll think it a clever ploy to up the ante. And as far as Mickey knew, it might be. But that’s not the vibe Mickey got from Balaam. The prophet wasn’t a game player. Mickey swallowed another shot of whiskey and said, “You’re gonna make Balak work for this one, aren’t you? Sending us back empty handed while you hold all the cards. Okay then, there’s not much more to say.”

The prophet lifted his head to meet Mickey’s eyes. “I can only do and say what the Lord tells me to do and say.” Once again he dropped his chin to his chest, face hidden,  the top of his gray hoodie facing Mickey and the rest of the delegates.

* * *

The fire hydrant Eeayore was leashed to had physically changed. No longer was it only yellow; now there was a gradient shift to red that started just below its dome shaped top. An aroma of dew covered hay rose from the fire hydrant, drawing Eeayore close. She licked the top, finally biting a chunk out of it. Unlike metal, the piece easily tore away. She chewed and swallowed it just like straw.

The fire hydrant reformed, repairing the indentation left from Eeayore’s bite. The remaining yellow paint liquefied, flowed upwards, and quickly restored the fire hydrant to its original condition. Eeayore brayed softly, snorted, then shook her head from side to side. The hay wasn’t sitting well inside her gut. It dissolved, passed through her stomach lining, entered her bloodstream, and finally reached her brain. Once there, it interfaced with her existing molecular structures to organically meld with and alter her brain’s functionality.

* * *

Balaam walked out of the bar alone; Mickey and his associates remained inside, drinking and discussing how to gently deliver the news of their failure to Balak. Eeayore watched Balaam approach as he exited the bar. She nodded her head and snorted, happy to see her master. “Lets go visit the river,” Balaam said, untying Eeayore from the fire hydrant.

His weight on her back comforted her. Their interspecies bonding was mutually satisfying. He wanted to believe in their friendship, but he was a realist. He knew Eeayore didn’t have much self awareness; her supposed feelings were his own anthropomorphic projections. But somehow, that didn’t lessen the bond he felt. Whatever the reality, what they had together soothed them both, man and beast.

* * *

The river running through Pethor became a small stream where it flowed through Balaam’s small parcel of land. Balaam meditated beneath the shade of a few fig trees, watching the sparkling water on its journey through his land. Eeayore stood at the stream’s edge drinking water, cooling down the heat generated by biological changes fomenting inside her skull. The electrochemical renovating from self coded nanobots, toughened by surviving an EMF sterilization, silently rewired her neural pathways.

* * *

It was getting late. Already dusk approached, but Balaam wasn’t yet motivated to go inside his house. It felt good to laze around on the grass and listen to the music of flowing water, praising the Lord for His boundless love. He yawned, and his consciousness shifted. YHWH made Himself known inside the prophet’s mind. Balaam’s desire to relax evaporated in the Lord’s presence, but this time, he only partially submitted.

He pondered over his values. He’d lost a great gig — the gig of a lifetime. If he’d just gotten his own way, just this once, he could’ve made enough money to last multiple lifetimes, living in unimaginable luxury, without ever worrying over material things again.

He thought about his twisted, inexplicable relationship with the Lord. He’d read the sacred scriptures of the Sons of Israel. They only left him more confused about the truth. Balaam’s connection with YHWH was direct — raw and visceral. He studied the Lord’s relationship with the early prophets. They seemed more psychopathic at times than anything else. They claimed God commanded the Sons of Israel  to kill those that worshipped false gods — every man, woman, and child. This command triggered no cognitive dissonance within the Israelites, even when God wrote in stone to kill no one. Balaam understood the ancient scriptures’ supreme lesson was obedience to God. A grateful child was expected to obey their loving Father.

Night had fallen as Balaam struggled to see the Divine Plan being played out on the cosmic stage, a plan far beyond his puny mortal ability to comprehend. All Balaam knew was that he must not curse the Sons of Israel, the most hardcore of biker gangs. Its members had once been slaves which turned them into very strong and angry men. These bikers were blessed with supernatural powers when they went on their rampages. Through the divine pipeline of prophets, they received God’s instructions, which directed their paths with absolute precision. The idol worshippers faced a merciless death at the hands of the Sons of Israel, who rode into town wearing their sacred colors: the menorah rocker and the star of David patches. There was no escape from the Divine Plan which relentlessly drove everyone towards a new golden age.

Balaam was drawn inside the seed of an approaching visionary state. In the starry night, the vision blossomed like a flower in the sun. Now the divine floodgates opened wide, releasing rivers of data and love that swept him under, left him gasping for air high above the world below. His clarity of thought sharpened into painful points, shredding his essence. He fell backwards endlessly, grasping in panic for something unmovable to hold. How could his flesh endure this onslaught of spiritual energy? Why him? Why was he chosen?  No bloodline linked him to the Israelites.

The scale of the vision curled him into a fetal position while lying beneath the fig trees. This time the divine encounter was pure revelation. The revelation of Unity. He understood, beyond what words could describe, Divinity IS Unity — the I AM that I AM, the unpronounceable name of YHWH, the Holy ONE. The entire diversity of creation, all the singularly unique individuals existing on all levels of reality, will unite spiritually on the great day everlasting.

Truth was never a passive acceptance of an intellectual belief in God. Truth is dynamic. It moves through time and worlds are born. Tradition shatters before the naked truth. Humankind has feared to give up control to a higher power, yet humankind has never really been in control. Truth can’t be controlled by carving laws in stone. Truth is alive. Truth is a complete takeover. Truth is relentless progression into and beyond time. Truth proves the greatest of all adventures is to obey God’s ultimate command: to someday be perfect, even as He is perfect.

Time unfroze. Balaam was awakened by Eeayore’s tongue licking his face, leaving thick strands of saliva running down his cheeks. Eeayore gazed down at his master, watching his eyes flicker open.

Balaam’s world had just broken apart into kaleidoscopic shards. It took time to gather the pieces back together. Contact with YHWH always left him addled, and always was he changed. The changes weren’t obvious. Not until circumstances drew them out.

Balaam noted that it was now earlier in the morning than when he’d first arrived. He’d passed out under the fig trees, possibly for days. His stomach churned in hunger, but Eeayore was contentedly well fed, grazing on the grass that covered the river’s edge.

Balaam said, “Come on girl, it’s time to go,” and led her home. Toast and eggs sounded so good right now.

Chapter 4: Once More With Feeling

Balaam rode Eeayore the short distance back home. A big gold and chrome plated RV was parked on the dirt road in front of his house. A few well dressed men stood on the pathway to his front porch. He knew what this was about. Balak had sent his upper echelon of delegates to try again in persuading him to curse the Sons of Israel. Balaam’s stomach twisted with nervous tension, foreseeing this would lead to yet another round with the Almighty.

The elite group of a Moabites watched Balaam as he patted the donkey’s hindquarters and tugged at her leather rein, guiding her to the grassy field next to his house. He unmounted and gave her scruffy neck an affectionate rub and pat. “Stay here girl. I’ve got business to attend to.”

The men walked over to intercept Balaam as he headed towards the house; this new entourage wasted no time. One of the men stepped away from the others and greeted Balaam with a smile and a handshake. “My name’s Pluto. I have a message to relay from Balak, son of Zippor. These are his words: ‘Don’t let anything hinder you from coming to see me. I will shower you with honors and give you whatever your heart desires. All you need do is curse the Israelites. You’re our only hope to save Moab from certain destruction.’” Pluto finished delivering the message and returned to his associates, a far more dignified bunch than was Mickey’s. Balak had sent his top guns for the job.

Balaam stared at Pluto questioningly, then shook his head from side to side, deep lines of frustration carved into his face. After a few long minutes, he said, “Balak could give me all of his silver and gold, but it would do no good. I can’t go beyond the word of the Lord my God. I can only suggest to you this: spend the night here in the RV. In the morning I’ll know more what the Lord wants of me. That’s the best I can do.”

Pluto said, “We understand and will do as you ask. The connection you have with your god is something we don’t take lightly. There is power in it that is hard for us to grasp; we respect that and your wisdom.”

“Thank you,” Balaam said. He was pale and gaunt, and speaking nearly in a whisper, added, “Right now, I’m hungry. I’ve been absent from my mortal frame for a few days and need to eat, so I’m not a good host right now. I recommend you visit the Pethor Bar if you get bored. That’s all the entertainment Pethor offers. Be cautious of the bar’s renegade nanobots. They can be a nuisance.”

Balak’s elite representatives looked concerned at the mention of renegade nanobots. They would, of course, stay the night, but the bar was out. Most people shied away from malfunctioning nanobots. Within minutes, the micro-machines could drastically alter you and your environment.

Donald, Pluto’s closest associate, asked, “Any good restaurants in Pethor?”

“There’s a Deli that’s not bad. Look for Jeff’s Kosher Sausage.” After Balaam made the suggestion, he quickly walked off, entering his home and shutting the door firmly behind him. That was the signal he desired to be alone, a private time where he could wrestle with himself. Which of his characte traits would come out on top? Walking straight to the kitchen cupboard, he grabbed his last bottle of whiskey. This was the liquid potion that would most likely decide the match.

Never could he understood why God chose him as His mouthpiece. The world was filled with people morally and spiritually superior to him. Why would the Lord think he’d be any good as a prophet? Everything else in his life ended in disaster. Why should prophesying be any different? His relationships. His failed marriages. His brief, disastrous career as a copywriter. His advertisements were the kiss of death for his clients.

Words. His life was all about words. Words ultimately came to curse his life, so he found refuge at the bottom of a bottle. He poured two fingers worth of whiskey into a glass and carried it, along with the bottle, to his old faded sofa. He plopped himself down and set the bottle atop the dusty coffee table. He sipped his drink and meditated. He didn’t have the talent for writing clever copy, but when the Lord chose to invade his mind and fill it with visions, it was then his words gained notoriety. He became the prophet with mojo, and depending on YHWH’s will, able to both bless and curse. The outcome from his gigs always kept him humble.

He didn’t go looking for notoriety. He had no desire to become a famous prophet. When the Almighty grabbed him by the throat and threw him against the spiritual mat, he was both honored and confused. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he’d met the one true God. The Lord’s mental invasion wasn’t a violent overthrow of his personal will; it was an onslaught of love. A torrent of compassion that blinded him with the light of heavenly glory. He sank beneath a sea of infinite love. No matter the amount of love he let in, there was always more in reserve. Balaam didn’t understand what to do with it.

He heard Eeayore braying in the grassy field next door. Her voice was mysteriously deeper now. Should he go check on her? No. Let it go. Contemplating his life and drinking whiskey were his top priorities at the moment. But she kept on braying. On and on it went, with no indication she was ever going to quit. “Shit,” Balaam said, irritated in being forced to leave the comfortable zone he’d just created.

With some difficulty, he got up from the sofa and walked outside. The fancy RV had left. Balak’s elite crew probably took off to look for Jeff’s Kosher Sausage, which sounded like a good idea to him right now.

Eeayore was in the field, but she wasn’t grazing. Instead, she stared at him eerily. Even from his position on the porch, he could see something hanging from her mouth. Balaam muttered to himself, then made his way across the field to stand before her. He held her snout with both hands and tilted her head back to better view the strangeness.

A glistening oblong bladder hung from Eeayore’s open mouth. At first, Balaam thought his donkey’s tongue was inflamed, but it wasn’t her tongue. He poked the thing with his finger a few times. Eeayore didn’t move or flinch, oblivious to her master’s prodding. The slimy sack changed color, transforming from burgundy to light purple. It quivered.

“Whatever this thing is, it’s got to go,” Balaam said. He grabbed hold of the thing’s slick surface, ignoring the urge to vomit. Waves of dizzying nausea nearly brought him to his knees. Clammy and slippery, he held on tightly and yanked the bladder free from Eeayore’s mouth. She immediately lowered her head and started grazing. Balaam still held the slimy sack in his hands.

The whiskey Balaam drank helped guide his decisions. He normally would have dumped the thing in a garbage can, instead, he carried it inside the house. He brought it to the kitchen and set it in the sink. He took a steak knife from the drawer and gave the bladder a tentative poke, then sliced it open. A hiss of fragrant air was released. The organ flattened out and dissolved into dry purple dust. He turned the faucet on and washed the dust down the drain. “Damn nanobots. What’d they do to my donkey?” He squirted dish soap from a plastic bottle into the sink, then scrubbed the porcelain hard with a rough sponge.

Balaam, at last, returned to the sofa, refilled his glass of whiskey, and resumed drinking. The alcohol warmed his thoughts and made him feel better about himself. He pondered his supernatural talents that God continued to fine tune after invading his mind. His visions were overwhelming, and within their awesome beauty, the Lord made plain that supernatural powers used for sorcery were wrong. Balaam never hid that truth from his customers. But no matter how many times Balaam explained he could do only that which the Lord said, they wouldn’t listen. Balaam knew his mojo was an illusion; all power in the universe was God’s. The circle of time lay bare before the Lord. When he told his customers of YHWH’s revelations of the future, they believed it was Balaam himself that changed destiny. Whenever he felt depressed, Balaam tried to make himself believe his customers’ hype.

He could no longer keep his eyes open. When his eyelids shut, a strobe light burst across the darkness. He spasmed, fell to the floor and jerked fitfully about like a beached fish gasping for water. He heard a voice that wasn’t a voice, saying words that weren’t words. A bolt of cosmic lightning to the center of his brain cracked open his reality filter and let the stars come streaming inside. The vision stabilized. Then God said: “If Balak’s men rise first and call on you,  go with them; but only the word which I speak to you — that shall you do.” An electrical neuron storm ignited within Balaam, followed by an ocean of love that drowned out any conscious thoughts of rebellion.

* * *

Balaam wasn’t sure of his own name when he awoke on the floor. The divine encounter was like a lovingly wielded sledgehammer to his mental integrity. It was morning, of that he was certain, but of the day, he wasn’t. He glanced out the front window. The big RV had returned from visiting downtown Pethor, neatly parked on the road in front of his house. How long had it been there?

Still reeling, he tried to focus on his immediate goal. He’d go to Moab and try to make Balak understand the mojo of blessing and cursing, the limitations the Lord Almighty imposed on him. You don’t bargain with God, or try to twist His spiritual arm. The universe doesn’t work that way. Balaam would give his best shot at helping Balak, but knew deep inside it was futile. God held an unwavering, impenetrable shield of protection over the Sons of Israel.

Balaam grabbed the open bottle of whiskey from the coffee table, and without pouring a glass, took a deep drink straight from the bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said to himself, “My mouth tastes like a dirty sock. Shit.” He took one last gulp and set the bottle down. He walked outside to the RV and knocked on the passenger side door. No one answered. He knocked again — harder this time.

Pluto opened the door, his eyelids still heavy with sleep. He stared at Balaam with a bit of disdain. “You’re up early.”

“I am?” Balaam asked, not synchronized yet with temporal time. His biological clock was not wound. Half of him wasn’t operational while his other half still floated amongst foreign stars and planets.

“The meeting with your god must’ve gone well. You woke me up like you can’t wait to get started. Are you coming with us?”

“I’m riding my donkey. That’s how I roll.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll wake the others and we’re off.” Pluto banged shut the RV’s metal door without any further words. It appeared to Balaam, even with his senses muted, Pluto wasn’t thrilled with this assignment.

Balaam intended to go and greet Eeayore in the grassy field, but the donkey had already walked over to the front yard. She affectionately nudged his leg. When their eyes met, Eeayore looked at her master with a new awareness. She seemed to give him a wink. It gave him the creeps.

The RV engine cranked over and fired. Before Balaam realized what was happening, the big vehicle pulled out and took off down the road, leaving behind a cloud of dust. If they wanted to travel ahead, that was fine with him. Why wait on a slow donkey? They’d all end up standing before Balak anyway, and once again — this time in person — he would explain his limitations. The Lord would never allow him to curse the Sons of Israel — now, or anytime in the future.

Balaam went inside the house and grabbed his old leather bag of traveling supplies. When he spotted the whiskey on the coffee table, he finished it off in one gulp. He exited his house, locked the front door, and mounted Eeayore. He gave Eeayore’s neck an affectionate pat, and the two interspecies friends were on their way to Moab.

Chapter 5: The Trip to Moab

The RV was miles ahead of Balaam. That’s fine. It wasn’t a race. Balaam had no desire to press Eeayore to go any faster. It gave him time to plan. His thoughts centered around the one obstacle standing in his way to riches. God. Creator and controller of the universe. The I AM that I AM. Encapsulating the circle of time, God knows the heart of every being in the cosmos: whether mortal, angel, transcendental celestial, or unfathomable eternal. So, how could a lowly, finite mortal like himself get his way with God? Balaam shook his head in frustration. He would go to Moab, offer up all he knew to please YHWH, while knowing deep inside, it was futile.

Balaam entered his favorite part of the landscape. He most enjoyed riding Eeayore down the dirt road that tunneled through the corn fields. For much of the way, chicken wire fences lined the road, keeping intruders from trespassing through the rows of corn. Corn was Pethor’s main crop, most of which went to the distillery. Pethor bourbon whiskey was noted for its subtle, sweet corn flavor.

The blue sky, the chilly bite of morning air, the sweet aroma of the corn fields, these things brought a modicum of comfort to Balaam. The trip wouldn’t be wasted if he remained in the moment and counted his blessings. It was best to forget dreams of wealth, not to mention honor. These thoughts were pure fantasy; be thankful for having enough to eat and drink — many in Pethor didn’t. Times were the hardest in known history, but when viewed through thankful eyes, life looked much better. Attitude changed the inner environment, but did nothing for the outer.

Being chosen as God’s mouthpiece wasn’t an easy job, nor one he even wanted. Nobody understood or sympathized with his predicament. How could they? He was an anomaly, a singularity. He was alone in the world, alone but for his precious Eeayore. He had no friends or lovers, only Eeayore and God. And a few bottles of Pethor’s finest bourbon.

In reality, there was no cause to bitch about his life. Some might even question his claim of being friendless. How could he be friendless when God Almighty Himself personally spoke to him? God was in his personal contact list, grouped under family. They stayed in touch via the Universal Spiritual Social Network, broadcasting an endless stream of information throughout the universe of universes.

The Lord of Hosts, the Infinite One whose breath gave him life, was head of a vast family. The loneliness Balaam felt came from this unequally yoked relationship. His friends were not his peers: neither the Lord, nor Eeayore. Sober or drunk, he strained to open his mind to the light, but his capacity was severely limited — a thimble can’t hold an ocean.

Eeayore began acting skittish. Balaam rubbed his hand along Eeayore’s neck and gave her an affectionate pat. She grew more agitated the farther along the road they went. When they approached a break in the fence to their right, Eeayore made for it, bolting off the road towards the corn fields. “Whoa girl! Where’re you going?”

Balaam carried a stick velcroed to his saddle. He rarely used it, but now, sadly, he must. Ripping it from the saddle, he whacked Eeayore on the butt, trying to force her back onto the road. She’d never behaved this strangely before. Why now? They were usually so perfectly in sync with one another discipline wasn’t needed, just a tap or two for minor error correction. But this was open rebellion. His blow landed harder and harsher than any he’d ever delivered before.

Eeayore halted, looked around nervously, and returned to the road through the gap in the fence she’d just run through. She shivered. Her ears stood straight, vibrating like a tuning fork. This disturbed Balaam more than the bladder he’d pulled from her mouth, which he assumed was created by a nanobot infection. Now, the low pitched hum of her fluttering ears harmonically resonated with his spine. He felt energy rising like a serpent up his back, uncoiling to strike, its power suddenly unleashed itself inside his head. His brain deflated, thought escaped through punctures left by the serpent’s fangs.

The road undulated: repeatedly lifting them up, then setting them down. Eeayore, terrified, bolted against the fence, shoving Balaam’s foot into the thick wire, nearly throwing him from the saddle. Suddenly she was stiff and motionless, staring down the road at a figure visible only to her — an unearthly phantom clothed in golden waves of light.

Balaam whacked Eeayore even harder than before, furious at her weird behavior. She might have broken his foot. It certainly felt that way. Through his pain, he heard the hum from Eeayore’s vibrating ears growing stronger. It rolled over his body, squeezing his flesh inside an invisible vice, then quickly releasing it, repeatedly and tortuously, from head to foot.

Eeayore unfroze and walked away from the fence. She stood in the middle of the road, her gaze never wavered from the glowing phantom blocking her path ten feet in front of her. It began drawing closer to her, its form expanding to cover the whole width of the road. There was no way around the unearthly being, the only choice was to return back home. Eeayore shivered. Rippling waves of flesh traveled from muzzle to tail, nearly throwing Balaam from the saddle once again.

Eeayore laid down on the road, fearful she might harm her master with involuntary convulsions. It was the only action she could take to protect him. The shining celestial materialized a sword of light in its luminous hand, broadcasting its intentions inside Eeayore’s fully morphed brain. She understood this being was dangerous to her master, more dangerous than him falling from the saddle. This being brought death by light-sword.

Balaam’s anger rose up swift and harsh, so fast it bypassed his barrier of self-control. He brought the stick down hard against Eeayore’s flesh, drawing blood from the gash it left in her hindquarters. All thought and concern vacated his mind; his confusion led to hallucinatory madness. He looked around, not knowing where he was or what he’d just done.

Eeayore’s skull transformed in order to house new brain structures. When the morphing stopped, she opened her mouth and spoke in a human female voice: “What did I ever do to deserve such a beating? Why did you hit me like that?” She grotesquely twisted her head around to look at Balaam, her long face scrunched up with questions. She noticed the blood her master had drawn coagulating on her hindquarters. “You even made me bleed.”

Balaam swirled about inside a broken reality, not thinking it odd to hear his donkey speak. It sounded quite natural to his ears. “Why did I hit you? Because you abused me — slammed me into the wire fence and nearly broke my foot. If I had a gun, I’d shoot you. Stupid ass.”

Tears erupted from Eeayore’s eyes and dripped down her face. Her master’s hurtful words ripped open her heart. “Why would you say such a thing? We’ve been friends almost forever. I’ve never acted like this before, have I?”

“No.”

The Lord touched Balaam. Touched him from deep inside, altering the physiological configuration of his eyes while expanding his mind. Beyond white light’s wavelength, the angel of the Lord was finally revealed to Balaam’s new eyes. This was truly a being of celestial grandeur, composed of mental and spiritual substances rather than anything physical.

Balaam finally fell from the saddle onto the road, his face flat against the earth. He was too frightened to move. This must be his end, not to die as an ordinary man, but as God’s failed messenger. This was his own special death, reserved for those whose sins were too great to be mercifully given a peaceful and mundane death. His were the sins of a man that conversed with God but yearned for worldly things. The sins of a man who lusts for that which leads to death everlasting. Balaam inhaled the earth’s foul dust laced with dry donkey droppings and engine oil drippings.

The celestial messenger of God pulsed brightly inside a cocoon of blue auric light, holding high the holy glowing sword that crackled with otherworldly energy, threatening to rip the sky apart. The angel spoke: “Why did you strike your donkey three times? I stood on the road to block your path. Your donkey saw me and turned away. She saved your life. If she hadn’t turned and laid down in the road, I would’ve killed you and let her live.”

The angel’s words were hot coals burning Balaam’s ears, leaving ashes on their way to his heart. By brandishing the light-sword, the celestial messenger caused Balaam to face and fear mortal death. Balaam knew his life was worth less than a donkey’s; he was an infinitesimal and annoying thorn within God’s grand cosmic design. He lifted his face from the ground, careful not to look directly into the powerful angel’s eyes, and said, “I’ve sinned unknowingly. I had no idea the Lord was against me in this matter. Since I’ve displeased Him, I’ll turn and go home.”

The prophet, near madness, crawled over to Eeayore and hugged her neck. They stood together on the dirt road. His arms still wrapped around her, he hated himself for his angry outburst towards her, beating her until she bled. He trembled in fear and regret, desperate to quench emotions that skimmed the rim of insanity.

The Lord’s messenger, at last, lowered the light-sword, draining off its crackling energy. Speaking loudly in a voice made of rushing waters, the angel instructed: “Go forward to Moab. Follow the men, and when you arrive, say only that which God allows.” The cocoon of light around the angel drew inward, pulling in every nearby photon. Darkness fell slowly upon them, and when it was complete, the high reality level imploded. The sun was released to shine again on Balaam and Eeayore. The angel was gone.

Balaam mounted Eeayore, shaking so badly he could barely hold the reins. With a loving stroke drawn carefully down Eeayore’s neck, Balaam said, “Let’s continue on to Moab and see what happens. I’m at the Lord’s mercy. Whether He grants me riches or slays me, I’m forever but a tattered glove worn on His glorious hand.”

Nanobot physiological changes in both Balaam and Eeayore welded them together beyond the physical plane and allowed them to touch the skirts of heaven. Eeayore’s hoofs left dust in their wake as they traveled down the road to Moab.

Chapter 6: Balaam and Balak

Moab was an upper class domain; Pethor wasn’t even in the running. Trotting past the polished stainless steel gates revealed a landscape of domes and towers. Metal and glass aesthetically dominated the theme of Balak’s personal territory. The perpetually shiny RV was parked curbside on the white brick road leading into town. Pluto stood behind the RV and gestured for Balaam to ride over. Balak’s entourage of elites waited inside the big vehicle, ready to go meet with Balak.

The air here was not the same as in Pethor. Long wisps of nearly transparent rainbow streamers, more mental than physical, floated and swirled all about. They were more fragrant than roses, and lent a peaceful aura to Moab. Balak was known for his excellent managerial skills, and Moab reflected this, with its sanitized, aromatic, and elegantly minimalist style. Balaam rode Eeayore to where Pluto stood. Eeayore snorted at Pluto and shook her head. Her power of human speech ended shortly after encountering the angel, yet a deep awareness still lingered behind her eyes.

Pluto kept himself composed, despite the string of donkey snot dripping down his shirt. “Welcome to Moab,” he said. “Follow me to Balak’s palace and I’ll introduce you to him.” He abruptly left Balaam, climbed inside the RV cockpit, slid the door shut, and took off down the road.

Eeayore followed, carrying Balaam over the spotless white bricks of main street. They soon arrived at the marble steps of the palace entrance. The main structure was a sparkling clear crystal dome laced in thin webs of polished stainless steel.

Balak was already walking down the long flight of marble steps, alerted to Balaam’s arrival by the palace security guards. He couldn’t wait to meet the prophet, a man that had spurned his first generous invitation. What manner of man could refuse the amount of wealth that he had offered? Whatever forces motivated Balaam, they were a mystery. Balak assumed the prophet’s talents were dispensed most sparingly, holding them in reserve for very special occasions.

The RV was parked curbside near the palace steps. Balaam dismounted Eeayore and tied her to a polished tubular steel hitching post. Balaam figured if Eeayore defecated, swarms of cleaning nanobots would erase her waste. Pluto and his associates left the RV and waited for Balak and his security entourage to descend the steps. Both groups met, then walked over and greeted Balaam while he finished tying Eeayore to the post.

Balak greeted Balaam coldly, “Wasn’t I earnest enough the first time I called on you? Why would you refuse to come here and let me honor you?” Balak’s men muttered to each other in whispers. A bitter vibe went out from the Moabites, but Balaam wasn’t upset. He knew it was deserved. Plus, he understood these people weren’t able  to view his actions through the eyes of the spirit.

Balaam’s face was hidden in shadow beneath his hoodie as he said, “Look! I’m here now. And I’ve stated before that I have no power to say anything other than what the Lord God tells me to say. For reasons beyond my understanding, the Lord has chosen the Sons of Israel for His own purposes.” After Balaam finished speaking, he stood silent, wondering why he’d come here. Was this just another mistake in a long list of mistakes? The chance of YHWH consenting to let him curse the Sons of Israel was nil. And yet, there must be a reason he was still alive after encountering an angel brandishing a light-sword. Was there a cosmic purpose he failed to see?

“But you’re here,” Balak said, “and that bodes well for me. Perhaps your god has changed his mind and judged the Moabites fit to live. Follow me to your hotel.”

Balaam had barely finished leashing Eeayore to the post; now he unleashed her and threw his leg over the saddle. They followed Balak and his men down another white brick road, through swirling multicolored vapors floating in the air, and arrived at the Kirjath Huzoth Hotel. It was magnificent: Two tall towers of glass crystal, bound together by bands of stainless steel. The building stretched high into the sky, the top floors wrapped in fluffy rainbow tinted clouds.

“You’ll stay here for the night,” Balak said. He reached into the front pouch of his gold and silver tie dyed robe and took out a chrome tube the size of a pen, etched with lines marking it into seven equal segments. “Here,” he said, and handed it to Balaam. “This is an oxeep, our cutting edge nanotech. Learn how to use it. It might even help you to better serve your god.”

“Thanks.” Balaam took it, holding it like a pen, surprised by its weight. Such a dense amount of matter packed into such a small size. How much greater must Moab’s level of technology be than Pethor’s. Even Moabite architecture showed a degree of knowledge and skill that made Pethor look pathetically backwards. Moab’s material wealth afforded Balak the finest of builders and coders, resulting in premium grade nanbots, not the wonky botshit of Pethor.

The valet took Eeayore to a stable somewhere behind the building. Balak and his entourage led Balaam through the crystalline columned doorway to the reception desk. There was not a speck of dust anywhere — nothing out of order. The clean flowing  lines of glistening glass and steel assured Balaam no microbial threats existed here, or anywhere else in Moab. Inside the hotel, the group felt even more clean and refreshed, bathed by unseen nanobots swarming over their skin, sterilizing and cleansing away impurities.

The neatly attired receptionist was already aware of Balak’s morning agenda. She handed Balaam a small plastic fob. “You’re in room 101, the special guest suite.”

Balaam took the fob, then turned to look about the area. He asked, “Where’s the bar?”

The receptionist answered, “Just issue the command ‘Okay Kirjath’ followed by your question or demand, and a synthetic servant will materialize to help you.” She paused for a second, then added, “Your room does come with a fully stocked bar.”

Balak, as Moabite custom dictated, kissed Balaam on the cheek and said, “Go rest up. We’ll get started in the morning. Play with the oxeep tonight and familiarize yourself with it.” Balak and his men left quickly. They wanted the prophet rested and refreshed, his mojo at its energetic peak. Balaam was their sole hope of survival when the Sons of Israel came to raze Moab in the name of their god.

No one stood a chance against the Sons of Israel. They were a force of nature — destiny made manifest — rolling over and slaughtering all worshippers of the false gods: Baal, Ashtoreth, Asherah, Bel, and Chemosh. They destroyed everyone blinded to YHWH’s great truth by these false gods. Only YHWH was, is, and will be the great I AM that I AM — creator of heaven and earth.

* * *

Balaam’s hotel suite was the nicest place he’d ever laid down his head. The stark cleanliness, the careful positioning of simple yet elegant furniture, made him immediately relax. When he dropped down on the bed face first, arms spread wide, the wondrous mattress absorbed his fall gently, as if he weighed no more than a feather. The room’s colors were tasteful grays and subtle tints of warm whites. He rolled onto his back and tilted his head to take in the room. It was designed to induce relaxation and remove stress, and it worked extremely well.

The hotel room bar, a stainless steel cabinet near a large picture window that faced Moab’s business center, was well stocked. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and walked over to it. A round bottle of scotch caught his eye. He took it from the cabinet and poured himself a glass, filling it halfway. He figured it was okay to let go of his worries for a few hours. He needed to relax and prepare his heart for the Visitor who would certainly call on him tonight. He wanted to be receptive to the Lord’s voice. He’d come too far for this trip to end in disaster. Still, deep within his heart of hearts, he knew how this would all end. God never changes. There was no  way to fudge the truth or bargain with God. It was as it has always been: God’s way or the highway. And that highway was death.

He reached into the hoodie pouch where he stored the oxeep. He took it out and examined it closely. Holding the oxeep in one hand and his scotch in the other, he became confused, and brought the oxeep to his lips to take a sip of whiskey. He realized his mistake when he tried to drink from the device, and said, “Must be more tired than I thought…” He switched hands and brought the scotch to his lips and swallowed long, nearly emptying the glass.

The oxeep was a very generous gift. He’d heard of them before; a device of legendary status. Normally, they were owned by the rich or the priesthood elite. Oxeeps were known for their range of code, their stability, and their level of quality. Balaam understood the power of these tiny gadgets. With one strand of hair from Eeayore, he could make a living duplicate of her in seconds: a copy that mimicked life down to the molecular level, with a lifespan of nearly 24 hours before the life-charge ran out. The wealthy priests officiating sacrifices to Baal used oxeeps to generate the sacrificial animals. They believed these synthetic beasts appeased the regional gods just as well as real animals. That’s what the clergy taught their congregations.

Balaam knew these regional gods were false, nothing more than worthless man made idols. The worst of the lot were actual fallen angels, cast down from heaven after they’d lost the war. But whatever the case, they were banned by YHWH — the one true God. And therein lies the question. Could synthetic sacrificial animals please YHWH?

Balaam understood how to work the oxeep after he’d inspected it closely. It used an ESP interface, and he was drunk enough now to make it a very dangerous toy. No sense invoking some nightmare beast into the world invented by his alcohol saturated brain. It was best just to crawl into bed and call it a night. The Lord Almighty would certainly visit his dreams tonight, and he was pathetically ill prepared… as usual.

* * *

A knock on the door awoke Balaam from a deep, dreamless sleep. “I’m coming!” Balaam yelled, and threw off his covers, rising awkwardly from the bed. His legs were stubborn in obeying his brain’s commands, even though his reality had remained intact the whole night through. The Lord God had not seen fit to disrupt his drunken rest; perhaps this was part of the divine plan: a calm, uneventful night, rather than reminding him once again to speak only the words which God put in his mouth.

Balaam stumbled to the door, opened it while yawning widely, and found Balak himself standing outside the doorway to greet him. This time it was only Balak, no entourage surrounded him. Balak said, “What word did your god give you? Something positive, I hope. Something for our mutual benefit.”

“The Lord let me sleep without dreaming, blessing me with a peaceful night’s rest. Perhaps He’s grown weary of repeating Himself to me.”

“Or perhaps his silence IS the message. Maybe he’s telling you to show some initiative, giving you permission to live in luxury with everything you’ve ever dreamed of having.”

“I want to believe you, Balak, but I know what you say isn’t true. YHWH doesn’t change. He would never give me the okay to curse the Sons of Israel. He’s chosen them for His own mysterious purpose, while binding me tightly to Himself. I know I can say only that which He allows me to say.”

Balak smiled and said, “Today we’ll find out if that’s true or not. I ask you, why would your god let those Israelite thugs destroy Moab? He wouldn’t! If your mojo is working, and you give the word, your word will come to pass. I believe in you. Your reputation is known throughout the land. And with my help, you’ll stop the Sons of Israel dead in their tracks.”

“I want to accept your generous offer more than you can imagine. All I can guarantee is that I’ll try. I pray God will grant both of us our heart’s desire. My hope rests in the fact that He has allowed me to stand here before you.” Balaam walked over to the nightstand where he’d left the bottle of scotch. He poured a glass for Balak and himself. Each held their drink high and clinked glasses. Balaam said, “Cheers.” They downed their drinks in a single swallow, slammed their empty glasses against the bar, and quickly left the hotel, eager to get started.

Balak left the Kirjath Huzoth Hotel with much greater confidence than Balaam. Balaam’s hopes were fueled by alcohol and the absence of a dream message from YHWH. These things weren’t much inspiration to the prophet.

“Where are you taking me?” Balaam asked, as they walked down the sanitized white brick streets past towering metal and glass buildings.

“To the high places of Baal,” Balak said.

Chapter 7: Making Mojo

The rocky hill rose abruptly from a field at the end of the cul de sac. The self maintaining white brick road contrasted sharply with the weed and rock strewn field where their borders met. Balaam followed Balak across the field and up the hill. When they reached the top, Balak gestured with a sweep of his hand towards the surrounding lowlands. “Our god, Chemosh, is one of the Baals. We stand atop one of his high places. From here, you’ll work your mojo. You’ve got a great panoramic view of my land and my people.

Balaam was nervous. He timidly said, “YHWH hates the hills where Baal is honored, but I’ll try as hard as I can to do as you wish. There’s only a slim chance of success based on the Lord’s absence last night, leaving me without a vision or a word. That’s not much to go on.” Balaam fidgeted with his hood, trying to find the perfect spot where the wool met his head.

Balak’s high ranking elites were already waiting for them, standing near a circular clearing surrounded by huge boulders. When Balaam saw this clearing, he knew this was the spot to perform the ceremonial sacrifices to YHWH.

Balaam said to Balak: “Build seven altars here. Prepare seven bulls and seven rams. Use your oxeep to generate the altars and the sacrificial beasts. Make the animals small and lethargic so that you can hold them in your hand for convenience. Make each alter a five foot tall cylinder topped with a vaporizing incinerator.” When Balaam shifted into prophet mode, he felt comfortable, falling into character quickly and naturally.

Balak nodded his head in enthusiastic agreement. He took the oxeep from an inner pocket of the silken white robe he wore especially for today’s sacrificial ceremony. He held the small device to his forehead and closed his eyes, locking into its ESP interface. An oxeep could readily transform imaginative thought into ingeniously designed working objects, both animate and inanimate. Balak and his entourage watched as the nanobot symphony of creation began.

Near the center of the hilltop clearing, seven equally spaced flat golden plates emerged, forming a circle. The plates grew, extruding upwards to a height of five feet. The upper half of each cylinder was wrapped in a swirl of small tubes surrounding a flat sacrificial staging area.  Each tube tip pointed towards the cylinder’s staging area. This was the vaporizing incinerator platform, where the synthetic animals were atomized.

The miniature bulls and rams started out as a dense vapor on the ground, centered in the circle of seven cylinders. The vapor rapidly formed into hand sized beasts which laid on their sides, too lazy to move. Balaam and Balak entered the circle, grabbed a bull in one hand and a ram in the other, and placed the pairs of synthetic beasts atop the cylindrical altars until all seven cylinders were loaded. After finishing this task, a blinding ball of blue light flashed atop each alter, evaporating the animals. Not a single ash was left behind.

Balaam said to Balak, “Wait here by the sacrificial altars while I look for some privacy beyond those boulders. Perhaps God will agree to meet with me. And if He does, whatever He reveals to me, that I will do.”

Balaam walked through a man sized gap between the boulders. He stood on a small mound hidden from Balak and his entourage. He gazed at the Moabite dominion below, spread out like a checkerboard across the land. He closed his eyes to this panoramic vista, and prayed:  “I have prepared the seven altars and offered on each a bull and a ram. But then, you know that already, my Lord. You see and know everything. You know my struggles. You know my weaknesses.”

With arms raised skyward, standing in a patch of weeds, he did his best to calm down and open himself up to whatever the Lord willed. There were handicaps to overcome. Number one: it was daylight. Number two: he was wide awake. This wasn’t a dream in the middle of the night, which was God’s normal time to invade his mind. Asleep, he was at his most vulnerable, but the Lord could open a spiritual channel to him whenever or wherever He saw fit.

Balaam felt a wave of heat rise up from his feet to his head. His eyes opened so wide they nearly fell from his face. He saw before him nothing but glittering blue flame, a pillar reaching skyward, past the clouds, breaking the bonds of earth.

The Lord opened a channel of control to Balaam’s mouth; the prophet felt his lips move, his tongue wiggle, his vocal chords vibrate, all beyond his control. He was no more than a fleshy marionette, his strings manipulated by God’s invisible hand. “Return to Balak, and you shall speak the words I give you to speak,” Balaam said, but in a voice not his own.

He began to walk slowly back to the sacrificial altars without willing himself to do so. With only a tiny portion of his mind still under his personal control, he walked past the high boulders to the sacrificial altars and stood before Balak. His loss of physical control should have frightened him, but his emotional responses were muted to the point of nonexistence. He was God’s zombie.

Balak gazed into the vacant eyes of Balaam that gazed coldly back at him. Was the prophet’s strange stare a hopeful sign?  Or did this mean he should dump this endeavor and start preparing an army to fight the Sons of Israel,  a battle lost before it’s even begun. Maybe it was best to grab his family and go hide in the hills. If Balaam couldn’t deliver on cursing the Israelites, then it was either fight or flight… and fighting was barely an option.

Balak’s fear grew worse the longer Balaam stood in silence staring at him. The prophet’s cold eyes peeled away layer after layer of Balak’s soul, searching for its nucleus. But it wasn’t Balaam doing this; he was absent from his body; another had taken possession of him, perhaps the Holy Spirit Himself. Balak dripped sweat from every pore, fear spiraling out of control and ready to explode.

A voice not Balaam’s own, spoke from the prophet’s mouth. It came from the starless depths just outside deepest space. Balak and his entourage stood frozen inside that voice. The oxeep shook in Balak’s hand, the nanobots confused by a burst of strange EMF. Even the micro-machines’ premium grade shielding failed to protect them. The amplified voice from beyond the stars had spoken these words:

“The chief of Moab has called upon the prophet to curse the Sons of Israel. How shall he curse what God has not? How shall he denounce what the Lord has not denounced?

The Sons of Israel dwell alone, not reckoning themselves among the other tribal realms. They expand their numbers beyond counting. And they are blessed, even in their deaths.

Let Balaam also die the death of the righteous; let his end be only the beginning, like those people the Lord has blessed.”

Balak’s face burned deep red. Sweat poured from his brow, dripping to the earth below. He turned to his elite entourage, his face marked deep with confusion. Then, he turned again to Balaam and shook his head in disgust. “What the hell did you just do to me? I brought you here to lay a curse on the Israelites and you turn around and bless them! What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to be rich?”

From airless space, Balaam looked down on the world spinning beneath his feet. This high vantage point comforted him, taking in the whole of humankind. He saw far below many glowing cities, the crown of humankind, built by generations that so quickly pass away. Born crying and screaming, they speedily decay and turn to dust — molecular fertilizer for succeeding generations. All of humankind’s joys, sorrows, loves, fears and hates, infused into their creations, building cities only to tear them down. Repeatedly, truths were learned and lost. Arrogant mortals, a confidence unjustified by history, forever seeking truth, reaching outward for that which already lives within.

Balaam fought hard to regain the moment. Lost on the edge of YHWH’s glow, each encounter made it more difficult to re-enter the stream of time. He vaguely remembered that Balak had just asked him a question. He must get back to the here and now, to leave God’s glory behind and return to the flesh. Like others that had drawn the curtain of time aside, he quickly lost all wisdom gained. There were no shortcuts for the pilgrim that dared step foot onto eternity road.

“So, what’s wrong with you?” Balak asked a second time. He could see a spark return to Balaam’s eyes. Perhaps the prophet’s trance had at last broken; now he was returning home, exiting past the heavenly gates.

Beneath his hood, Balaam was sorrowful. Again he reiterated, making clear his dilemma: “I must take heed to the word God puts in my mouth. I can’t do otherwise. I’ve told you before, I’m bound to the Lord, and must only say His word, not my own.”

“Yeah? We’ll see. Maybe our performance wasn’t quite right,” Balak said, failing to comprehend the prophet’s words. He gave Balaam a brief smile then continued on, “Maybe we just made a little error. Let’s try it again for good measure. This time, we’ll go to a place with a better view of the border. A place where you can see the Sons of Israel waiting to strike. Your mojo’s warmed up now, so let’s go.”

* * *

The group hiked up to the highest peak of Mount Pisgah. From this scenic overlook, Balaam could see lines of motorcycles forming a border around Moab. The Sons of Israel had gathered a mighty force — an ironclad cobra waiting to strike. The outskirts of Moab were sparsely populated, its few residents living in ever increasing fear. The thunder of motorcycle engines grew louder by the day, sounding out a threat to anyone that dared worship the Baals. In Moab’s case, it was the abominable Baal known as Chemosh.

The top of Mount Pisgah was a barren field. Balaam said to Balak, “Take out your oxeep. Do the same as before, except this time we’ll modify the altars by making them four foot tall — a foot shorter. As for the bulls and rams, make them less lethargic by causing them to shiver, as if ill from a high fever.”

Balak did as instructed. He closed his eyes and synced with the oxeep ESP interface. The altars extruded from seven golden plates that appeared from nowhere, arranged in a circle like they were before. A plasma of glowing gas formed on the ground at the center of the circle of altars, condensing into a tiny pile of wiggling bulls and rams.

Balaam and Balak entered the circle. They each grabbed a bull in one hand and a ram in the other. This time the tiny animals shivered and squirmed. They were repulsive to hold, letting go hot piss in the men’s hands. They placed the animals on the altars as quickly as possible, until all seven altars were loaded with one set of synthetic offerings. Shortly, a flash of intense blue light went off atop each alter, instantly vaporizing the beasts. Not a single flake of ash remained.

“Stay by the burnt offerings while I go call on the Lord,” Balaam said as he walked briskly to a spot near the edge of a steep cliff. He hoped to finish the ritual quickly. He stood near the edge and looked down at the line of kosherized motorcycles marking the Sons of Israel’s camp.

Without warning, the Lord abruptly entered Balaam’s head. This caused his knees to buckle, nearly sending him sailing off the cliff. His mind imploded into a bright singularity, shot straight up, then burst into an explosion of sparkling flames like a skyrocket. The Lord said to Balaam: “Go back to Balak and I shall put My words in you.” The Lord’s blinding presence departed as abruptly as it had arrived.

This time, Balaam fell back into the temporal stream quickly, no residual deity hangover lingered. The message was planted in his mind like a bomb set to go off in Balak’s face.

Balak watched the prophet walk towards him, now much steadier on his feet, not wonky like he was after his last divine encounter. When they met face to face, he noted Balaam’s eyes weren’t glazed and vacant like before. They were bright and clear, filled with an unearthly light. Balak believed this was a good sign; perhaps the prophet’s god had granted him permission to spare Moab and all other worshippers of the various Baals.

While Balaam stood before the chief of Moab and his elite entourage, the divine fuse was lit. When the bomb went off, Balaam spoke in a voice much louder than was humanly possible:

“Rise up Balak and listen!

God is not a man that He should lie,

nor a son of man that He should repent.

Has the Lord ever said anything and not done it?

He always makes good on His word.

God commands me to bless the Sons of Israel, and that I must do.

The Lord has blessed, and that cannot be undone.

There is no magical divination against Jacob,

the leader of the Sons of Israel.

God sees no iniquity in him.

The Sons of Israel rise like a lion and will not lie down,

not until they devour their prey and drink the blood of the slain.”

Balak flushed red with anger. It took all of his self control not to punch the prophet in the face. “Shit! Why do you speak at all? What’s wrong with you? Don’t bless or curse; just shut the hell up!” He held the oxeep in his hand and contemplated using it as a weapon. Unlocked, an army of rampaging nanobots could lay waste to all familiar reality within a five mile radius. An oxeep, unfortunately, can’t be unlocked — except for his.

Balak tried to calm himself down. He took a bottle of pills from a pouch he wore around his waist, flipped its lid, and tipped a pill into his mouth. Anger at this point would not do him nor Moab any good. A minute later, he was chemically calmed down. All his hopes rested on Balaam’s powers. If he could only topple the prophet’s wall of religion that surrounded him.

A few deep breaths later, and Balak was relaxed enough to place his hand on Balaam’s shoulder. Balak’s most trusted allies, Pluto and Donald, stood at his side  for encouragement. He said to Balaam softly, “Maybe we’ve gone to the wrong high places. This time we’ll go to the top of Peor which overlooks the wasteland. Perhaps a change of scenery will please your god.”

* * *

“Build for me seven altars and generate seven bulls and seven rams, just as we used the first time,” Balaam said.

Balak knew the routine well enough by now. He wondered why Balaam bothered to repeat the instructions? It must be that repetition in the ritual enhances the prophet’s mojo. Fortunately, an oxeep automatically stores the owner’s preferences, and when the same or similar commands are issued, its sophisticated artificial intelligence can materialize objects near instantaneously.

Balaam strolled about the top of Peor, looking down at the vast barren desert below. Nothing grew on the land that surrounded this high place of Chemosh. Not a single cactus. Not even a tumbleweed. This land was sterile. Life found no home within this soil. Atop this dry rocky hilltop, they were the only lifeforms for miles around. Balaam turned to look at Balak and his cadre and saw that the altars and offerings were already in place. The oxeep’s stored algorithms had generated tiny lethargic bulls and rams, much like the first round of offerings.

Balaam approached the altars, and for a moment, contemplated his attitude. It needed adjusting. What good was his mojo when the Lord steered his will? His supernatural powers were useless in God’s presence. He managed to shrug off the bad feelings and help Balak load the altars with synthetic beasts. Right after the last altar was loaded, the vaporizing blue lights simultaneously flashed across the altars.

Balaam turned and walked a short distance from the group. He gazed out across the vast desert wilderness. A sense of deja vu invaded his thoughts that wasn’t scaled to his short earthly sojourn, but scaled to the entire length of human existence. A sense that his attempts to curse the Israelites has happened before. Intuitively, he suspected history repeated itself, and each time it did, the human race lost its accumulated wisdom. Either this was true, or he lived within the dream of a madman.

The prophet could see the Sons of Israel, all their club chapters lined up in multiple rows, an army that lined the northern horizon. His observation of the Israelite war machine was suddenly disrupted. The divine explosion nearly knocked him from his feet. The Spirit of God possessed him, wrenched his mind away from his skull and transformed him. His face, contorted by unseen hands, rippled like a pond disturbed by a stone. Hoodie soaked with perspiration, mouth moved by God, Balaam walked over to Balak and said:

“The words that stream from Balaam,

a man who sees too clearly,

who hears God’s voice,

and sees the vision of the Almighty,

falls down with eyes wide open:

The Sons of Israel look beautiful and plentiful,

they stand in contrast to those worshiping idols,

gods created by the hand of man.

The Sons of Israel shall grow,

conquering the deluded nations,

correcting the course of time,

when they align with the Most High,

and repair the domain of humankind.

Once again, blessed is he who blesses you,

and cursed is he who curses you.”

Balak was stunned once again. Pluto rested his hand on his shoulder, an attempt to sympathize with him, but Balak shrugged it off and walked closer to Balaam, as if to strike him. Red faced with anger, dripping sweat, he shouted at the prophet. No longer could he restrain himself. Balak’s hopes had fallen apart. Nothing he said or did could separate Balaam from his strange god. No amount of riches. No amount of fame. No amount of praise. This prophet was truly mad, a man from another world, alien to everything Balak had ever known.

Shaking his fist in Balaam’s face, Balak yelled, “You’ve screwed me three times now. Three times you’ve blessed the Sons of Israel and thus cursed me! I would’ve given you anything you wanted. Anything. But your god took that from you. Get out of here! I’m done with you.” Balak took the oxeep from his pocket and brought it to his forehead, tempted to initiate the ESP link. He could turn this prophet inside out if he wanted. His oxeep had an illegal hack, an unlocking key, but fear stopped him. Once nanobots were freed from their default setting to never harm humans, they go renegade — a serious danger to himself, as well as his target.

Balaam stared at the ground beneath his feet, frustrated with himself and with the Lord Almighty. This cursing and blessing gig was its own curse, creating more problems than it was worth. YHWH stood outside the temporal stream. Whenever God wished, He thrust his hand into time and tinkered. Balaam was a damaged mortal instrument, a creature used for God’s own ends. Children cannot understand the restraints their parents place on them. Balaam saw no personal benefit by being shackled with divine restraints. What harm was there in reaping a smidgen of profit? Would that be such a terrible thing for his soul?

With defeat embedded inside every word, Balaam said, “I’ve repeatedly told you that I can’t accept your generous offers. I can’t go beyond the word of the Lord. Of my own will, I’m powerless to choose either good or evil. What the Lord says, those are the words I must speak.” His hood hid in shadow deep lines of stress across his face. He made ready to leave, but was compelled to face Balak once again, a spiritual energy growing hot inside his core. Balaam added, “I’m leaving. Don’t worry about that. But before I do, I must reveal to you the vision now unfolding inside my head. This is your fate.”

His words made Balak turn pale. He shivered. No matter Balaam’s refusal to curse the Sons of Israel, that didn’t negate his connection to unearthly powers — powers Balak couldn’t understand. If there was any validity to this YHWH, if this deity truly was more than just another local Baal, then he should walk away from the prophet right now. Balak signaled his entourage to leave. The time had come to walk down the hill and leave Balaam prophesying to himself.

Balaam seemed ready to speak. Balak and his entourage froze. The prophet began to vibrate like a tuning fork. His form blurred. Dislodged from the anchor of worldly reality, he was thrust into an alien dimension. Balaam’s mind left his flesh, leaving his mouth under the control of the Lord Almighty. His voice thundered, echoing across the hilltops to the vast desert below. He spoke these words:

“The utterance of Balaam, a man with eyes wide open,

a man who hears the words of God,

and has knowledge transmitted from the Most High,

filled with the vision of the Almighty,

who falls down, eyes wide open:

I see Him, but not now;

I behold His presence in the distance;

a Star shall shine with a sovereignty,

and batter Moab into the ground,

destroying the sons of tumult.

The Sons of Israel will do valiantly,

but discover they are included equally amongst the tribes,

subject to the Most High,

the unseen hand moving through the domain of humankind,

the future dark with wars, wars of every kind, the Most High saving all that can be saved.

The Star shines as always on this world, but few see it,

hidden in the heart’s darkness.

In the farthest reach of time, the Star bursts forth gloriously,

the new world of light and love takes all to God’s home,

finally, humankind has found its own.”

The divine connection ended abruptly. Balaam fell to the ground face first, breathing dust. Every inch of his skin drenched in sweat, his filthy hoodie wet and muddy. The intense energy that electrified him but a minute before, was gone, leaving him near death.

Balak walked over to stand over Balaam, and shook his head in disgust, a disgust wrapped in fear. He nudged the prophet’s shoulder with the tip of his shoe, and said, “You’ve failed me and yourself. We’re finished. Find your way home. Quickly.” Balak walked back to his anxious entourage, They huddled together and talked amongst themselves, occasionally pointing an accusatory finger at Balaam.

The exhausted prophet struggled to lift himself from the dirt. He didn’t look at Balak or his entourage. He had no desire to see their scornful looks. He already felt lower than he’d ever felt in his life. He managed to get on his feet, although weak, sick, and shaken. He bent over and vomited on his shoes. With what little dignity remained, he attempted to brush himself off, succeeding only in smearing mud deeper into his sweatshirt.

He began walking down the hill, head bowed, face hidden beneath his muddy hood. All he wanted now was to find Eeayore and get the hell out of here. The sooner, the better.

Chapter 8: Twisted

YHWH had snuffed out all Balaam’s attempts to curse the Sons of Israel. Instead, the Lord targeted the curses at Balak. The prophet tried to please Moab’s chief, but failed. Now there was nothing left to do but drink. Balaam lifted the glass of whiskey to his lips and contemplated the virtues of sipping. Instead, he downed it all in a single gulp. There was a positive side to all his failures. He left Moab with an oxeep in his pouch. A very precious and generous gift from Balak, despite his failure to curse the Israelites.

Pethor had nothing that could match the oxeep’s world class technology; it was extremely powerful, exponentially greater than any wonky nanobot gadget in Pethor. The extreme power of the oxeep worried Balaam as much as it excited him. What if he was locked telepathically with its interface, and at that very moment, YHWH manifested inside his skull?

The inside of the Pethor Bar had continued to morph in Balaam’s absence, even after the attempted EMF sterilization of the renegade nanobots. The prophet was seated at a small wooden table in a corner of the bar. The bar had turned into a black obsidian cave, its details obscured under a thick smoky haze. Lush folds of black glassy material, frozen into bulbous swirling extrusions, formed the cave-bar’s interior. This glossy black environment, mostly hidden under dark smoke, reflected Balaam’s dark inner environment.

The Pethor Bar was his meditation room. As his blood alcohol levels rose, the more weepy and melancholic he grew. He reminisced about his fifth birthday, after which his life path changed. That was the year YHWH first visited him. He remembered bright sunlight streaming into the family’s modest living room. To a child, this room was huge, archetypal of all places of comfort. A safe haven from a world in rapid decline. The orange curtains were drawn back, a stream of photons illuminated his birthday cake atop the table. Five lit candles were ready to be blown out. He had his birthday wish ready. It was simple: to be a good boy, a boy obedient to his parents and to the God they served. With all his breath he blew out the candles. A wisp of smoke replaced each flame.

How many drinks had he downed? He didn’t know, but there was still about half a bottle left. His tolerance of alcohol had risen greatly — a warning he was addicted. Sober or drunk, he didn’t try to rationalize his drinking. There was no way to justify an obvious avoidance of reality. He poured another glass. This time he chose to sip. From his sweatshirt pouch he grabbed the oxeep and touched it to his forehead. Five lit candles appeared on the table before him. He quickly put the device back inside the pouch. Whiskey and an oxeep were a bad combination.

He stared at the nanobot generated candles. He took a deep breath, filled his aging lungs with smoky air, and blew out all the candles in a single breath. He fell into a fit of coughing. Wisps of candle wax smoke rose into the toxic air. He was 5 years old again with the immature neural array of an unfinished brain. His deepest wish was for the return of the Garden of  Eden, a place where beauty and innocence flourished. Amongst the flowers, he was pure and good. He loved God and all of His children. The garden grew and covered the earth. A pure light was born and traveled between the folds of space. From the very nucleus of infinity, outside of time and space, the spiritual light traveled to Earth, a tiny planet amongst countless others. The light finally arrived at Balaam’s home, and there, invaded his immature mind.

At five years old, Balaam was equipped to make moral choices. He held the power to decide which paths he should take. His mother and father smiled down at him, unaware their son’s mental flowering had come into full bloom. Balaam’s desire for the light was as endless as the light’s ability to give, streaming love to him from its infinite source — the creator of all. No matter how much love filled Balaam, there was an endless amount held in reserve.  He drank in the light of love, just as he now drank whiskey in the dark.

The universe wasn’t a foreboding mystery to a young, gifted Balaam. He discovered early on that asking big questions got big answers. All that was required to hear the answers was faith enough to listen, an unfaltering faith, with the courage to accept the truth, no matter where it led. He asked questions, and dared to accept whatever God revealed. As loyalty is paramount in human friendship, it also holds true in friendship with the divine.

The birthday candles turned black and melted into the tabletop. The dark stain spread, molecularly integrating with the table, turning the wood into the same glassy obsidian that formed the rest of the barroom interior. Balaam gulped down another whiskey. He almost convinced himself that alcohol kept insanity at bay. He knew that wasn’t true. Whiskey only softened the insanity. Made it palatable. At times, like now, the deja vu grabbed hold so strong it cut through his drunkenness. He somehow knew beyond any doubt, the Moabite gig had gone down before: Balak, the blessing and the cursing, a talking donkey — it was all a bad rerun, churned out again and again, until time ended.

The children of humankind always forgot their lessons, destined to relearn them time and time again. Humankind suffered a collective dementia that never healed. The world called out beyond the stars for a savior — a revelator. And when Balaam was fully in the grip of deja vu, he understood that humankind’s prayer had already been answered. And when deja vu let him go, he fell into darkness, the prayer forgotten. He was once more lost and lonely.

The bottle of whiskey was empty. He signaled the bartender for another. An idea had formed in his head; it just needed a bit more fuel to finish. Another bottle appeared at his table. A quarter of the way through, self pity rained down on him. It turned into a violent storm that sucked him though a mental vortex, pulling his soul inside out. Flesh tore from bones, joy ripped from life, his ever diminishing existence a mere blip along a solitary string of time, a string soon to be cut off.

Balaam was dizzier than he’d ever been. The obsidian table spun his bottle of whiskey around and around. With much fumbling and sloppiness, he managed to catch the bottle. He poured his glass nearly full, but spilled most of the liquor onto the tabletop. He tried to lick it up, sliding his wet face against the table’s slick surface. He caught a reflection of a second face near his. The face said, “You’ve had enough. I’m cutting you off.”

Slipping off his chair, Balaam fell to the floor. It was the same glass black surface as everything else in the cave-bar. The reflections, the sparkles, the confusion of bouncing photon, all this smacked him painfully in the face. He fell on his side, vomited, then rolled over on his back. The bartender stood over him, looking down at him. He was talking, but Balaam couldn’t understand his words.

Eeayore came up behind the bartender. “That’s my master and my friend. That is, when he’s not beating my ass with a stick,” the donkey said.

“I’m sorry… Eeayore. So, so, sorry,” Balaam said, weeping uncontrollably. Here lay God’s prophet, the wizard of curses and blessings, the failed sayer of imprecatory prayers. He was all this. And less.

“Get up master! Go outside. I have an idea. One that will change everything,” Eeayore said, sinking through the floor and disappearing. She was such a good phantom friend.

The bartender helped Balaam get on his feet, not letting go until he was certain the prophet could stand on his own. “I’ll walk you to the door,” the bartender said. Balaam didn’t resist, but struggled to balance himself as if walking across deck on a tumultuous sea. The obsidian door slid open as they approached. It was night outside, as dark as the bar inside, lit by a moon hidden behind low lying clouds.

Eeayore was tied to the fire hydrant where Balaam always left her. She greeted her master with a nod and a snort as he stepped from the bar. The door slid shut hard behind him. Eeayore watched as Balaam staggered towards her. When her master finally arrived at her side, she said, “I thought of something that’ll change your life forever. I understand the Moab problem. I understand it completely. And I know how to fix it.”

Balaam wrapped his arms around the donkey’s neck in drunken, loving affection. This also helped him stand up without falling. “You’re my best friend, Eeayore. I’d marry you. I’d marry you in a minute, if you were human. No offense.”

Eeayore smiled as best she could. “None taken. I’ve got no problem being a simple beast of burden. Being human is your problem. And your burden.”

Gently hugging the donkey’s neck, Balaam whispered into Eeayore’s ear, “You are very very right, my friend.” Beneath his swirling alcoholic daze, the dilemma of moral choice was certainly his own personal curse, not a blessing. Thankfully, alcohol wrapped all his problems in a blanket of numb comfort. “You were gonna tell me something that’ll change my life. What is it?”

Eeayore brayed in the affirmative and said, “Good! You’re sober enough to pay attention.” She wagged her head from side to side, breaking loose Balaam’s hug and knocking him to the ground. “Get up and look me in the face. And don’t hang on me. I can’t talk to you when you’re hanging on me.”

Balaam struggled to get on his feet and face Eeayore. He dusted himself off and asked, “What’s your idea?” He wanted so badly to drape himself affectionately around her neck.

Eeayore, possessed by a blend of nanobots and dark spiritual forces, said, “Your God is always listening. He knows your every thought, so pay close attention to my words. I’ll take you back to Moab. You will then go speak to Balak once more. Explain to him the Lord’s commandments to the Sons of Israel. Explain to them that these commandments must be obeyed in order for them to be blessed by the Lord.” Eeayore smiled too widely, the ends of her mouth reaching towards the bottom of her ears. “Surely Balak will understand why you can’t curse the Sons of Israel. He will then understand what he must do.”

Balaam smiled nearly as wide as his donkey, but was clueless as to what her words meant. His head muddled, his neurons shorting out across his brain, he looked upon Eeayore as his intellectual and spiritual superior. She was as strong as he was weak. What a pathetic creature he was, a stain on humanity’s underpants. Eeayore was so blessed. How wonderful not to be saddled down with addictions, regrets, moral choices… or even a soul. Eeayore was not at war with herself. She was a soulless beast. Superior to him in every way.

Eeayore commanded Balaam, “You need to step back while I gear up to transform. We’re going to Moab.”

Balaam obeyed.

* * *

The tether dissolved, releasing Eeayore from the fire hydrant. She walked behind a fig tree located on the south side of the building, distancing herself from people’s prying eyes just leaving the bar. Eeayore called out to Balaam, “Come here and watch, but keep about five feet from me until I’m finished.”

He staggered back to Eeayore, struggling to estimate the five foot buffer zone around her.

Eeayore said, “You’re fine. Stay right where you are.” She grinned wickedly. Her new attitude wasn’t familiar to Balaam; she was a strange new donkey.

Eeayore’s skin absorbed all her hair. It was pulled inside her body by nanobots — revved up to radically transform their biological host. A low rumbling hum filled the air around her. Her bare skin took on a brushed metallic sheen. Her legs withered away, lowering her new metal body to the ground. Her head and neck undulated for a few moments, then quickly morphed into a nose cone. The tip housed a single eye, and beneath it, a tiny mouth.

Balaam watched all this transformation lethargically, half asleep with drink. His donkey was gone now, replaced by whatever this new thing was. For a second, he wondered why he wasn’t crying at the loss of his friend. Shouldn’t he be sad? His best friend’s warm mammalian body was now transformed into a cylinder of cold metal.

Eeayore continued to tweak her new shape. She was a sleek metallic torpedo, ready for rapid transit to Moab. The nanobots embedded anti-grav disks on her metal belly so that she hovered a couple inches above the ground. The low rumble dissipated, replaced by an annoying whine that cut through Balaam’s anesthetized awareness.

A single tear finally ran down Balaam’s cheek; it swiftly turned into a torrent  of sobs. Whatever this thing was his friend had become, he would learn to accept with an open heart. Perhaps the old Eeayore would return one day. The high pitched whine wound down to a soft, soothing purr of restrained power.

“It’s time to hop aboard,” Eeayore said, her voice loud and clear, despite coming from the tiny mouth embedded in the nose cone.

Balaam wiped away his tears and regained control of himself. Why be sad? After all, Eeayore still lived. So what if she was no longer a warm blooded mammal covered in hair, her skin metal and not flesh? Balaam’s sobs turned into laughter — the laughter of relief. Why fret? The universe changed every second. It was either change or die — the universe’s cosmic motto. He walked over to Eeayore the Torpedo and stroked her metal back. “You’ll always be my girl,” Balaam said in a trembling voice. He sounded sappy, even to himself. A few more tears leaked from his eyes, then he grabbed control of his melancholy as he sobered up a bit.

“Come on. Swing your leg over me and mount up. We’re going to Moab,” Eeayore said. Balaam obeyed. With the awkwardness of a nerve frayed drunkard, he managed to seat himself atop Eeayore’s sleek torpedo body. Directly in front of him emerged two, fifteen inch metallic poles, each topped with a rubber handgrip. Balaam figured these grips were safety features to keep from sliding off, so he held them tightly. The false bravery of inebriation helped him cooperate with Eeayore’s demands, but now he needed another drink. More, if necessary.

The Eeayore torpedo floated smoothly from behind the fig tree and turned onto the main road in front of the bar. No bar patrons saw them, and the road was empty. Balaam felt a growing vibration building under his butt. A deep hum grew in intensity, the power winding up inside the torpedo between his legs. They began to move down the road, floating a few inches above the road’s surface, then quickly gained speed. The wind blew into Balaam’s hood. He tightened the drawstrings to keep the hood on his head.

Balaam gripped the hand-holds tighter and ducked between them close to Eeayore’s metallic back. They flew increasingly faster through the corn fields, a blurry wall on either side of them. No angel of the Lord stood in the way to stop or threaten them. Eeayore’s tiny eye morphed into a headlamp, throwing a strong beam of light to clear away darkness on the path before them. Balaam’s hoodie flapped wildly in the rushing wind.

A sea of lights ahead signaled their rapid approach to Moab. The road turned from dirt and pebbles to white brick. Eeayore the Torpedo slowed down to a safe cruising speed as they passed through the open steel gates that towered over them. They approached the crystal palace, the metal webbed dome lit from within, casting rainbows of light all around, illuminating the flight of steps to the main entrance. Eeayore floated effortlessly up the steps to the palace entrance and came to a halt.

Balaam shivered from cold and stress. He released his grip on the hand-holds. Cautious, not certain what to expect next, he dismounted. Eeayore’s headlight beam dimmed and morphed back into a single tiny eye. Balaam noted that her eye looked dead, not the lively eyes of the Eeayore of old — the one he knew and loved.

Guards dressed in black jumpsuits appeared without warning. They held small pencil sized glass tubes they aimed at Balaam. Balaam didn’t know what to say or do. Eventually he nodded his head and said softly, “Good evening.” He seemed without his normal spiritual connection to YHWH at that moment. Always had YHWH been so close, a presence on the verge of cracking open his consciousness, his thoughts never private. The Lord knew Balaam better than Balaam knew himself. So where was the Lord now?

Eeayore’s mechanical mechanisms were silent. Her torpedo body rested on the opalescent walkway that rimmed the palace dome, her power drained. This made Balaam feel lost. Now both Eeayore and his Lord had abandoned him. The guards formed a circle around Balaam, never losing their aim on him, glass tubes pointed directly at his chest. The only clear thought in the prophet’s head now was his need for a bottle of whiskey, his last earthly comfort.

Balak walked out of the building to meet with Balaam. The guards opened up a gap in the circle they’d formed around the prophet, allowing their chief inside. Balak was depressed. And when he saw Balaam this time, he became even more downcast. What could this useless prophet want? Balaam’s god would never allow a curse to be cast upon the Sons of Israel, so why was he here? What good was he?

Balaam felt a new sensation invade his head. It wasn’t YHWH. He turned to Eeayore the Torpedo and saw a thin glowing filament run from the tip of her nose cone, across the walkway, and into his sandal shod foot. The filament was so thin no one noticed it but him. Balaam was now connected to whatever thing Eeayore had become. His own self awareness waned, replaced by a presence that finally dominated his mind completely.

“Why are you here?” Balak asked the prophet, studying the dark face beneath the woolen hood. “You look like shit. Even worse than me. Whatever you’ve got to say, say it, and be on your way. You’re no friend to Moab.”

The prophet was not himself. What remained of his mind was barely able to carry on basic bodily functions. His heart beat and he breathed, but that was all. On its own accord, his mouth moved and words were spoken, none of which he willed to happen.

Balaam, or whatever thing stood in his place, said:

“I now give you the secret to the Sons of Israel’s destruction. Put a stumbling block before them. Tempt them with harlots. Tempt them with food sacrificed to idols. Tempt them until they become the authors of their own destruction and curse themselves into oblivion.”

Balak stood stunned, open mouthed with surprise. Such an elegant and simple solution. He watched as Balaam fell to the ground after speaking, a marionette whose strings were suddenly severed. “Take Balaam and his weird machine and dump them outside the city gates. I’m finished with that ass.  We’ve got a plan now.  Let’s get moving.”

Chapter 9: Gray to Black

Balaam awoke when the morning sun hit him in the face. He was lying in the dirt outside the walls of Moab. When consciousness returned and his throbbing headache eased, he sat up and looked around for Eeayore, still too wobbly to walk. Where was his donkey? What form had she taken now? He felt something wet and slick on the back of his neck where his hood had fallen away. He turned to look, and Eeayore’s dripping wet tongue caught him in the eye. She had come back to him! Back to the lovable beast that lived forever inside his heart.

“Enough licking, Eeayore! I’m happy to see you too,” Balaam said, as he stiffly rose to his feet. His equilibrium was only half working. He stumbled and nearly fell to the ground, managing to grab Eeayore’s neck just in time. He stared into her eyes, expecting her to speak again. She didn’t. Poor Eeayore. She, too, had been unwittingly used by supernatural forces to accomplish some mysterious end. When he looked into her eyes now, they held no more self awareness than any other donkey had, which wasn’t much.

It occurred to Balaam to check his hoodie pouch. He felt around inside. There was his oxeep, along with something new. He pulled the new item out. A single gold coin. This, he supposed, was payment for whatever he’d done last night, which he had no memory of at all.

Standing beside Eeayore, a loneliness fell over him, a loneliness as vast as the space between the stars. Even Eeayore’s mammalian warmth lacked the comfort he usually derived whenever he stroked her neck. A deep chasm opened in his soul, and he fought not to fall inside. It was futile. He was lost. Whatever his life had been before this moment, was gone. Only a dark and cold abyss awaited him.

Balaam closed his eyes and tried to remember last night. He found nothing but darkness. It was more than a drunken whiskey blackout; he knew what those were like. This was more. This was bloody. This was his own dying soul that had fallen into a bottomless pit. He was alone with nothing to hold onto. Cold darkness. Lonely darkness. The eyes of his eyes could no longer see. Before, there had always been a rope, a tether that ran from earth to hell. Before last night he could pull himself up from the abyss, but not any more.

Searching for light, he waved his arms about in madness. Invisible forces sliced his soul with diamond blades: sharp, cold, empty, a pain eternal. Balaam’s breath grew shallow. He released Eeayore’s neck and fell into the dust. What had he become? What choices had he made that brought him here? Ever since childhood he had believed himself destined for a divine purpose. Now, he had no purpose. Somehow, he’d chosen chaos. He’d chosen death. His time on earth had passed. Was it greed that brought on his downfall? How? All his life he’d done nothing but obey the Lord, and yet, he’d missed the ultimate blessing. He was a sheep lost to the Lord. He had slipped through God’s fingers, numbered amongst the countless faces of the damned.

His heart slowed. He pissed himself. Pain ran across his chest and numbed his hands. He tasted dirt on his tongue. It turned to mud in his mouth, sucking out what moisture remained in him. Was there nothing about him worth saving? Had all his years moving to and fro on the earth been a life squandered?

He found himself on his feet once again. A somnambulism fell over him, and he walked into the desert a dead man, leaving Eeayore behind. Whatever force moved him, it did nothing to energize his awareness. He was a sleeping soul, a half animated corpse. Life was a memory quickly fading. A dry parchment crumbling to dust. The thin strand of thought holding his mind together frayed, not strong enough to even let him see his surroundings.

How long had he walked? When had he last eaten or drank water? As his feet moved across the sand someone slapped him in the face. That someone welcomed him to Midian, then slapped him once again. A day had past. And another. And another. Life around him decayed. The people mere phantoms; they lived on the borders of existence, just as he did. He walked up and down hills, passed through rushing streams, trudged long miles through hot deserts. When the Sons of Israel came, he barely knew it. The thunder of motorcycle engines shook the earth. Blood rained down all around him. And when a hot steel blade cut across his torso and his guts spilled to the ground, there was no pain.

The darkness was complete. No light, photonic or spiritual, illuminated his mind. This was death. This was his last day, the grand finale of a life lost in a battle with itself. The remaining trickle of his life-force drained from his body and evaporated into the void. Nothing remained. His conflicts resolved into one spiraling crescendo, a single note, a pitiful skyrocket shot into an airless void, bursting into nothingness. Nothingness. Was there any mercy for him?

Just after the final pulse of blood fed his brain for the final time, a heavy, endless silence fell upon him. An awful stillness. A lonesome singularity within an endless, starless vacuum.

Now the veil rent in half. A hand reached out and caught him.

The End

Copyright

The right of Stephen Beam to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

Balaam, the Gray Prophet

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © Stephen Beam 2014

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers consent in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

Content

Stephen Beam
BALAAM, THE GRAY PROPHET

Foreword

Chapter 1: First Meeting

Chapter 2: God’s Dream

Chapter 3: Bad News

Chapter 4: Once More With Feeling

Chapter 5: The Trip to Moab

Chapter 6: Balaam and Balak

Chapter 7: Making Mojo

Chapter 8: Twisted

Chapter 9: Gray to Black

Copyright