SATURDAY SESSIONS # 4

Welcome to SATURDAY SESSIONS # 4, featuring The Compromise, a story about healing through past-life regression.
Jordan finds himself in the lost continent of Lemuria, where a  peaceful, exotic and highly-advanced civilisation is said to have flourished some 50,000 years ago.



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# 4

My hiking shoes were really snug. I was wearing a onesie.  Blue, light and comfortable.  Cotton, I think, open neck, perfect for this climate. There was a logo embossed on my breast-pocket which looked like a microscope with some indecipherable lettering beneath it. Where am I?  Huh, must have dozed off. Didn't realise I was so tired.                                                                                                        
I had slipped away from my group and our guide at the hotel and switched off my phone. From the looks I was getting, I knew that I was out-of-bounds and unwelcome. I sat on a circular street bench. Everything was curvy or circular in this city. Multi-coloured  birds hopped about at my feet and one even landed on my lap and started to sing. I felt such a thrill to be trusted by the bird and even serenaded with such gusto!
  
                                                                                                                                                    
People's bodies looked supple and lithe, like dancers. I observed the gentle couples nonchalantly strolling by. They wore comfortable, loose clothing with amazing colour combinations that seemed to shift in front of my very eyes. They were all quite tall and their skin was white, very white, unlike mine, unlike anybody I'd ever met back home. Many of them had ginger-coloured hair which they all wore long, women and men.  Big, brown, almond-shaped eyes with large eyebrows and long eyelids seemed to be a common feature of these graceful people who radiated a sense of peace and stillness. I'd heard from a colleague, who had been here once, that the absence of stress was the reason why there was no chronic illness of any kind in Lemuria. At least, that's the official version, he laughed,  and joked about secret underground hospitals and Lemurian propaganda. The guide had told us on the flight that the first thing we'd notice was the peace and quiet here. No traffic. And of course, the Lemurians don't speak.                                                                                                                                
I'm a PhD graduate in Chemistry working for the Quality Standards Authority which oversees the regulation of Health & Safety standards at all the laboratories and research centres, companies and institutions, across the continent. Two thousand one hundred and seven employees turn up for work at the same high-rise building every morning.  I head up a team of one hundred and forty-nine people on floors fifty-seven and fifty-eight of the building. After five years' work at the QSA, where I was an employee with the Division responsible for overseeing quality standards in the arms industry, group leaders like me are offered a bonus trip to Lemuria. The promotion from being an employee at the Defence Division to unit manager at Health came as a bit of a surprise, I have to admit. Although I'm sure it had to do with a recommendation I'd submitted two years ago on a nerve agent which eventually led to a faster, more efficient and cost-effective deployment of a certain chemical weapon in the theatre of war. It's a colourless, odourless, organophosphorus compound which causes paralysis leading to suffocation within a maximum period of less than five minutes, significantly more effective and humane than the original product which had been sent to us for approval.  I even got an award, as it quite rare for an employee at the QSA regulatory body to revert to the manufacturers and submit his own suggestions for improvement. At the award ceremony, to the great amusement of all present, the product was officially nick-named The Flyspray, as two of the active ingredients in my submission, tetramethrin and d-phenothrin, are commonly used in pesticides which inhibit the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, block the nerve impulses and rapidly precipitate muscular paralysis and suffocation.                                                                            

They had briefed us a bit on what they knew about Lemuria and though the  tour was meant to be a perk, it was an open secret that the purpose of the trip was really meant to be a fact-finding mission based on the hope that we'd return with some new insights or innovations.  Field trips to this continent for research purposes are notoriously difficult,  as there is little or no access to anything of real interest to us and our society back home. The fact that everything  in this place is so different makes it at once fascinating, but at the same time impossible, to compare or line up with our own specific needs and requirements back home.                                                                    

Regular tourists are not welcome here. That's why I couldn't bring Croescia with me, or Jarok, our ten-year-old child.  But most tourists wouldn't  be interested in Lemuria anyway.  For example, they don't use money here. There are no shops, no bars, no restaurants.  As you know, tourists like to spend money, otherwise they don't feel it's a real holiday.  I mean, why would they work themselves to the bone throughout the year to save a bit of money if they couldn't splash out once in a while on a holiday?  To go to a place with no drink available, of course, would be unthinkable.  As for shopping, well, I'm not into shopping myself but Croescia and Jarok love it. So for them, Lemuria would be struck off the list. Where's the fun wandering around a city, they might ask, if they can't spend their money in the shops?  Although now that I think of it, where's the fun in that?  Did I love shopping when I was Jarok's age?  Maybe.  But for as long as I can remember, I could never quite get the rationale behind the love of shopping.  Women, in particular, I only once met a woman who didn't love shopping.  It must be the excitement of trying on that dress or fitting on those shoes followed by the excitement of looking forward to actually wearing the stuff later. And of course, owning it. But where's the fun in that?  Maybe I need to get out more. Or maybe I'm more Lemurian than I think!                                

(Continued next Saturday!)

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