The Chronicles of Qi Read online

  Agni smiles and picks up the chains of bead on the small table which leans on the wall; a small painting of her and her first patient catching her attention for a second. This patient also suffered from the condition which the boy is affected with, Leukemia. Agni remembers how she treated the girl for months unending; she was a novice who was afraid of losing a patient on her first trial. The girl’s family cried outside the room where she tended to the girl. The strong-willed child eventually got well after series of trials from Agni. Since then, Agni has handled different ailments from thousands of patients.

  She looks at the boy with pity in her eyes and fetches the ointment from one of her vials, handing it to the mother and says, “Give it to him to quench his thirst, it will help calm him down.” The mother eagerly grabs the vial from Agni’s hand, and she empties the content of the vial into the boy’s mouth. He immediately calms down and falls into a light sleep.

  His mother then helps him to lie down on the sofa in the study.

  “I will now use my magical stone,” Agni says to the sleepy boy and reveals the emerald-green stone pendant of her grandma, moving it as a pendulum across the body, stopping over his chest, and putting it down. The boy’s mother watches Agni’s hand as it swings the pendant over her son.

  Her face is a mix of sadness and confusion. She never thought the boy’s sickness would get to this stage, she is a devout Catholic who usually doesn’t believe in healers, alternative medicine, clairvoyants and soothsayers. She was raised to think of them as charlatans who scam people for their hard-earned money. But Agni is the only one who everybody referred her to, she was her last chance.

  The boy’s mother looks at Agni with renewed vigor and leans forward on the reclining chair. She holds the boy’s hand and places it on her palm, feeling the life slowly ebbing out of him, his palm clearly showing a lack of blood as the pink color has given way to bone white. The mother cannot bear to lose her son, the only child of her womb who stayed with her. All her other children died of the same leukemia, a blood cancer that eats up its victims from inside out. When the boy first started showing signs of the deadly affliction, his mother took him to the priest, she had concluded that it was a malignant spirit trying to kill all her children. The priest prepared an exorcism for the boy and it was carried out in the space of seven days. The boy seemed better, then all of a sudden, he relapsed. Agni describes it as the ‘Placebo effect’. The boy got better because he believed he was healed but the deadly cancer was still thriving inside him. The mother contemplates if Agni can really save her son or she will be forced to watch another of her seeds die.

  “You can relax my angel,” Agni says, and the boy closes his eyes, while she rubs her hands and activates the stone on the chest to read his Karma.

  A visible yellowish particle string connects her hands with the pendant. The yellow light envelops the room, bringing with it a warmth that was not characteristic of winter in Poland. She now performs a Chinese Qi-Gong practice by using her palms to draw bad Qi from the boy’s chest down and away through his legs, without actually touching his body. After three long movements to strip his etheric body off the disruptive energy, she finishes and straightens her back.

  This ancient Chinese practice is a way of drawing poisonous energy from the body without any application of physical force. The practice is mostly used to ease the pain of those besieged by illness and those who have been wounded in battle, some of their pain is removed and transferred to inanimate objects or to animals. Agni transfers the negative energy into a large jar which is the equivalent of Pandora’s box in Greek mythology, if opened, all hell was going to break lose, literarily. The jar is fortified with herbs and propped against the wall at the farthest corner in the room.

  “Open your eyes, my little angel,” she says.

  The brave boy opens his eyes and sits up with the help of his mother who curiously hangs on the lips of Agni.

  “Your son’s leukemia is progressing,” Agni reveals to his mom, whispering. “The cancer cells are very strong. I’m able to minimize the pain, but he needs to start therapy right away.”

  The mother is perplexed by Agni’s calm and “not worried at all” behavior. Just as she wants to say something, Agni moves over to an ancient cabinet and looks through the variety of prepared extracts. In the cabinet, Agni has stored herbs from all over the world, spices from India, leaves from Africa such as Taraxacum, Berberis, Digitalis, Graviola, Triangulare, Betel leaf and Mistletoe.

  She then turns around to her patient and hands the mother a 500ml pharmacy glass bottle reading ‘Artemisia Annua’. The bottle is brownish and somewhat stout, on the cover is a cork covered by a miniscule cup to regulate the amount of medicine that comes out.

  The boy’s mother looks at Agni with pleading eyes, like she was the bronze serpent which Moses carved for the people of Israel to look up to while they were poisoned in the desert. She was her healer, her only hope. Agni understands very well what she means to these people, but she’s also aware that she has no one to delegate minor cases to and she can feel the stress piling on her over the years, slowly reducing Agni’s life expectancy. Yet, she loves what she does and will continue if time allows.

  Agni hands the short bottle over to the sick boy’s mother, “Here you go,” she says. “Give him two teaspoons per day. One in the morning and another at night.”

  She takes her notepad from the table and writes down more instructions.

  “Use Chamomile tea for extended sleep, so his cells regenerate faster,” she explains with a confident and ensuring voice. “Also, add slices of ginger, star anise and clove into all of his dishes, and let him drink at least two glasses of pressed onions in the morning. You can put cotton wool into his nostrils, so that he won’t taste it. - And absolutely no sugar! Oh, and…,” Agni walks over to another cabinet and takes out a bottle of water with her free hand, “use this magnetized water instead of the one you have at home.”

  The mother holds the bottle in front of her, curiously mustering it from left to right, “Magnetized water?”

  “You won’t find it in the shop,” Agni points out. “They only sell water with chemicals, for obvious reasons. The corporations don’t want people to know ‘the secret’. I have used my own magnets to clean this water.”

  She looks up from her notebook, serious and with a lecturing tone, “Because ‘water is life’ and has a memory that can either make you sick or healthy. So, never forget”.

  Agni rips off the note and hands it to the mother.

  “I’ll see you and your little angel in 4 weeks,” she says with a smile on her face and leaves the two alone, exiting the room.

  “You can let in the next patient.” Agni says to her front desk assistant while passing through the richly decorated hallway, featuring photos of her meeting important politicians, historians, artists and religious leaders. She takes a turn into the living room where Józef Pilsudski, 63, a stern looking man with a thick mustache and unwavering eyes already awaits her. The former Chief of State stands in front of a framed painting portraying ‘Julian Ochorowicz’, a Polish philosopher, psychologist, inventor to the precursor of radio and television, poet, publicist, and leading exponent of Polish Positivism.

  “Excuse me, Józef,” Agni says in a busy tone. “Today is one of these days.”

  “No need to apologize, my dear,” Józef responds with a peaceful look in his eyes. “Your patients come first. I’ve got all the time in the world… at least for now.”

  The two old friends exchange a warm hug and sit down on the caramel-colored sofa with its beige stripes, a customized gift from one of Agni’s Parisian patients who visit her at least twice a year.

  While she prepares her own tea mixture of wild herbs and cinnamon for them on the sofa table, Józef begins with his matter.

  “I still can’t get your vision out of my mind,” he says with a sad undertone. “It troubles me to know what is ahead for our nation when I am long gone. But what concerns me even m
ore is that people don’t want to believe in it. They are ignorant and foolish, digging their own graves, when there is still time to prepare for the worst.”

  Agni hands Józef his tea and smiles at peace.

  “Fate has been decided for us,” she answers with the wisdom of an elder. “Even my visions cannot change the future. No matter how much we try, fate always prevails. The reason why I told you about them and showed you my drawings is that you will prepare a plan for the people wanting to be saved.”

  Józef sighs as he takes a sip of his tea and resumes. “Your words still ring clear in my head: ‘Our motherland will be resurrected to lead humanity through a spiritual revolution and establish the Kingdom of God on Earth’,” he rests his teacup on his thigh and holds Agni’s hand.

  “Agni, you’ve always been like a daughter to me,” Józef then says concerned. “It breaks my heart to know what awaits you.”

  She puts the tea on the table and lays her free hand over his, touched by Józef’s caring words.

  “Life and death exist to cultivate our soul. Living the Tao and finding the ‘Source’ must be our goal,” she sits up straight, her blue eyes angelically lighting up.

  “Stop thinking of death as the end of all things and accept it as the beginning of a new and exciting cycle. Be at peace with the universe and cosmos. And never forget: Qi connects us all, eternally.”

  Just having finished her sentence, Agni gets up swiftly and goes over to a glass case. She carefully takes out a tube-like formation of jagged crystal, nearly transparent and easily reflecting off its surface any form of light that touches it.

  “Here, take this berg-crystal, and put it under your pillow,” she continues. “You will sleep like a baby. It calms your soul.”

  Józef holds the quartz up into the sunlight that magically breaks through the stained window glass of the living room.

  Agni’s big blue eyes bathe for a moment in the light, when another of her vision of the future flashes suddenly through her mind.

  ∞∞∞

  * BACK TO THE YEAR 2341 *

  A convoy of six alien spacecraft approaches Earth. Each one of them appears like a beehive with protruding sharp edges. The front of the spacecraft looks like missile heads infused into an onion bulb. They move in a formation of two, with one spaceship leading while the other flies behind it and they move together in unison without ever breaking the arrangement. The spaceship in front of the formation is silver-grey, while the spacecraft which fly under it are all blackish in color. It is obvious why bottom spacecraft are so visible; in case of war, they can easily be singled out by enemy spacecraft, thereby giving their lives for their leader whose spacecraft is capable of camouflaging into the color of the clouds. The spacecraft all fly within 10m of each other.

  The convoy enters the Earth’s atmosphere smoothly through an opening portal, with its craft speeding through the fluffy white clouds before they dive into the ocean and resurface at the beach of an island.

  Sets of footprints mark the sand on this tropical spot on the map that seems far away from any civilization of the mainland.

  An invisibility cloak is deactivated and Lyr-an Princess Mai-loo-na, lean, with an air of aristocracy, crosses the sand. Her long silver-white hair rolls down her back in waves, catching the beaming sunlight while her spectral silvereyes scan the surrounding quizzically. The princess appears in her 20s, but her exquisite exterior fails to reveal her Lyr-an age which is over hundred thousands of Earth years.

  Mai-loo-na is a renowned warrior princess across the galaxy and tribes usually shudder at the mention of her name. She is very beautiful and of athletic build, her lithe stature allowing her to fight with the nimble skill of a cat. As what humans would call a Caucasian-Asian mix of alien origin, her eyes are small slits of watery sunshine, extremely white cornea with silver irises.

  However, her most beautiful feature of all is a battle scar which cuts diagonally across her face. What human Earthlings would call a flaw, any alien race sees as a beautiful and spiritual mark that is to be honored and respected as it is part of a soul’s karma.

  The scar was gotten during battle with her supposed best friend who betrayed her because of her natural thirst for power. The scar has been treated by all the priests known to the Lyr-an species in this galaxy but nothing could be done to make it stop hurting every now and then when the heavenly bodies would align to activate the secret poison that was hidden under the blade that cut her. Whenever this happened, Mai-loo-na would literally go mad and be out of control, becoming a danger to the people around and to herself. After further observation tough, it was revealed that the kind of weapon which was used to cut Mai-loo-na was not of ordinary fashion. The person responsible for the scar turned out to be a shape-shifting insectoid named Sao-ling.

  Sao-ling is originally from the Akaz-ar alien tribe, a set of highly intelligent but to Lyr-ans very ugly-looking alien beings with mandibles, six arms and a hunched back. Their secret is that they never morph into their true form until they turn 500 in Lyr-an age. This ability to disguise under any race till they are 500 years old makes the Akaz-ar tribe very deceitful. They live amongst others and gather enough knowledge and influence which they then use to overthrow the ruler and claim the seat of power for themselves.

  And this was also the plan of Sao-ling when she first came to Lyr-a.

  The shape-shifting insectoid made sure to befriend the royal family so she could get unchecked premises to be in their palace. Because of her body type and her tribe’s life cycle, she was able to claim to be of the same age as Mai-loo-na, who trusted Sao-ling with her life until Sao’s true colors began to reveal themselves.

  It started with an assault on a Lyr-an village and from there turned into a full blown war, culminating in a standoff between Mai-loo-na and Sao-ling where Sao-ling laced her blade with the Akra-na-di poison, taken from the deathly Akra-na-di tree, which is meant to kill a victim within one hour. During the course of the fight, Sao-ling went for Mai-loo-na’s neck repeatedly but failed until she eventually managed to make a cut across Mai-loo-na’s face. The cut wasn’t deep, but it started affecting Mai-loo-na almost immediately. The poison sent hot fumes to her brain and blurred her vision. Sao-ling had fortified her weapon with a special metal, extracted from the sun, and was capable of hurting every living organism and destroying any chance for organic tissue to re-generate.

  Sao-ling watched on as Mai-loo-na screamed in anguish and eventually entered into a fit of laughter, in mockery of Mai-loo-na’s situation. This disrespectful behavior from warrior to warrior angered Mai-loo-na so much that she mustered the last of her intense training of picking out your opponent through sound, and then slashed with utmost precision, sending Sao’s head rolling on the blood-soaked palace ground.

  She never trusted anybody after that and learned to live life without friends and emotional attachments.

  Mai-loo-na continues across the sand toward a hyper loop pod and steps inside while the tenuous reptile pattern of her skin-tight silver-gray jumpsuit armor adjusts to the colors of her environment like the scales of a chameleon.

  The princess’ pod rushes through a tinted glass tube past the rainforest, along a volcano, right over a clear lake to the city center of the island where the organic architecture melts beautifully with its natural surroundings. Passing by the water, the pod speeds through a hydrogenate algae-producing airborne lake city.

  The self-sufficient airships contain special varieties of micro-seaweed that convert sunlight and CO2 into hydrogen biofuels. The exterior of each ship is covered in solar panels and wind turbines.

  The Lyr-an pods have a round base for landing, an oblong passenger body and a cockpit for two pilots. They look like layers of leafy green vegetables, wrapped tightly together, and are as tall as a two-storey building and as wide as a space shuttle that lets out no noise and seamlessly breaks through the air and water. All the pods are in communication with each other and are held tightly by a force field.


  The pod reaches the center and moves along an organic spiraling tower, made of a biofuel producing facade. The tower desalinates lake water, harvests wind, solar energy, and recycles waste. The greenery on the facade consists of algae membranes. On the other side shoots a solar observation tower in shape of a money tree into the sky.

  The pods keep moving around the island and scouting the area before they start rotating around a spot. The natural electric field within the pods intensifies when a wormhole forms in the center and starts getting bigger as the pods increase in their speed.

  One by one, all the pods start jumping through the hole and reappear on the other side of the island where Mai-loo-na’s pod halts in front of a big organic skyscraper. The three towers are joined by habitable bridges at the top and bottom which is the only remarkable landmark of the island.

  Mai-loo-na steps out of her pod and walks determined, almost as if in a rush, through the holographic door of the skyscraper. She then materializes at the teleport-lift of her organic penthouse and walks straight from the open living room of the neatly integrated white marble-looking organic decor to her spacious bedroom.

  The princess steps on an oval alien dress-platform, shooting out a self-automated ring-scan that materializes a traditional A-Nation Shalwar Kameez robe on her skin. This highly advanced, DNA controlled AI device uses programmable matter to rearrange hard atoms in order to build new non-cellular matter instantaneously and create whatever its owner wishes for or telepathically thinks about.

  Mai-loo-na looks down to the Lyr-an face-inducer ring on her right hand finger. This ring, vibrating imperceptibly on a constant basis as a result of the supercharged particles within, allowing it to alter organic, cellular matter, on the surface, seems to be made of some form of steel, flawless in its design and bearing no significant marks or logos. There is a straight-lined indentation running around the diameter of that ring. The indentation gives off a soft gold glow; a side effect of the monatomic gold conductor used between the ring and the consciousness of its wearer.