Chapter Twelve. The Times--They Are Auspicious!

The Times--They Are Auspicious!

Derby fell into a deep trance. Dear reader, to feel the vibration of Umpa's breath, simply make the hollow sound of the wind blowing slowly across an open field. Imagine the early stage of a storm brewing and go ahead now and make the sound. Pucker your lips into a wide whistle shape and slowly exhale that hooooooo sound. Close your eyes and feel the vibration. Alter the pressure and the opening so the sound varies, just like the wind.

It was this feeling which thrust Derby into another space and time. He was peering out from glistening winter leaves on nearly bare trees. He found himself wondering from whose eyes was he seeing the landscape below him. He was looking at the snow covered woods behind his house. He had named it the road to Giverny once, because of a Monet painting a friend had pointed out.

Something different about that trail in the woods though....

"What was it?," he found himself wondering. He pushed down further into the vision. It was an unusually early snow, last year. Right after the election. Obama had been re-elected in an historic battle. It was the 57th quadrennial presidential election. It had been accompanied by thirty three Senate elections and the 113th Congressional elections. There were also eleven gubbernatorial races and dozens of state races.

The republican candidate had been a late arrival on the scene. The obvious contenders all had a contentious run by having their hats in the ring. Impalen had withdrawn early because of the scandal over many of her new business customers and their extreme violence toward the public and democratic officials. Her rifle selling empire had made her very wealthy, especially after she got the new contract with ValuMart. Huckaberry was the next to fall out of the race due to the controversy which had arisen over his influence to get a rapist released from prison, who subsequently raped and killed another victim, Wanda Drummer.

Grinch Neuterhead had only lasted a few months, after his political action group Ransacking the Future had gotten caught with its hand in the pork barrel jar.

Wilford "Matt" Hominy held on the longest from the "Birds of Pale Feathers," as the republican contenders had come to be known by. His comparisons of Muslims to Nazis over the ground zero mosque debate had finally worked against him in his own party, as the tide started turning away from violence and name calling.

Obama's opponent was a son of the South, named Wilson Nathaniel Tallulah Savannah. He had been a hero in the Iraq war and had amassed a fortune as a video game manufacturer. His video game SNIPER had outsold all other electronic games of all times, even though it was just introduced in early 2011. He ran on the slogan, United We Fall which had become the marching song of the Tea Party.

As Derby peered into the woods from "leaf" level, he found himself contemplating the landscape of the fresh snow. He had been hopeful for the future after the election. As trying as the election had been on him, the candidates and the whole country, it had been the flurry of activity around the predictions of Armegeddon which had made December 2012 so pregnant with anxiety.

"What does the discovery of the continued Mayan calendar mean?" As Derby heard himself ask the question, he pictured the ancient invention which had been unearthed near Campeche, Mexico. Its ornate carvings, depicting the Mayan Earth and Moon Goddess, Ix Chel, were illuminated in bright colors, which had survived its burial for 2,100 years. The discovery of the "Hub" as the invention was informally named, also led to the religious movement of invoking the feminine power of intuition.

Suddenly, from his celestial position, his vision of the Hub transformed into the roulette wheel in Umpa's chamber. The wheel was turning and he instinctively knew that the streaking light around the rim of the wheel would soon separate into white and black marbles. As he saw the white marble land into the black compartment and the black into the white, exactly as they had just moments ago, he realized that all of these visions had taken place with the whoosh of Umpa's breath.

"Yin inside Yang inside Yin. Yang inside Yin inside Yang. How well do you know your I Ching Mr. Ripley?"

Umpa was no longer blowing. Derby suspected he was about to be freshly educated by a mystic of great power.