Bjorn and I were helping John Bowker tend the furnace at Furnace Pond one night and we began telling stories in its glow. Pops, Karl, and Gramps were going from John's wagon with wheelbarrows loading bog iron, charcoal, and shells into the chimney up the hill from the beach we were sitting on.

We had seen several shooting stars, some that landed below the tree line, that night. John was telling us about the latest Verne story he read about a dirigible journey to Thule on top of the world governed by an advanced society.

"Remember when the Younger Gods made man to do the work for the Older gods?" Bjorn asked.

"OK, so we were the automatons?" I snapped.

"Yes, the automatons are still here; where are the Older and Younger Gods?"Bjorn questioned.

"Where?"

"They went to Venus and the moon!" John Bowker chimed in. He just loved Jules Vern.

In between loads. Pops, Karl, and Gramps started moving in the shadows; which is never good.

"Well, yes and no," Bjorn answered. "See, not only did the Younger Gods—the point is they are both gone, mostly. The Younger Gods wanted their automatons to do their work smarter and faster for them and the Older Gods; inviting them to run their infrastructure and their businesses, to out compete each other; they had them conduct their wars, and they killed off the Older Gods…Mostly.

"In business, the automatons took over companies which ran their governments. They were more proficient in their professions. They hired and fired. They had them take care of their surgeries and health care. They administered, wrote, and enforced their laws as their penal system increased. The goal was to always secure the cheapest labor at the cost of their own home security and privacy. Once in their homes, some of the automatons slowly killed them through medications; others over the morning coffee.

"Originally, the bodied automatons…"

"Bodied?" I asked.

"Sorry," Bjorn said, "you know how they have cams on looms and punch cards on player pianos?"

Pops starting whooping in the dark and Karl howled like an ulfserker as Gramps started on his drum.

"Yes," John chipped in. "We have elaborate cams running the hammers in the forge."

"They used technology that grew out of that to not only run their wagons, forges, looms, factories, mail, courts, water supply, farms, and to make their coffee."

"I wouldn't mind that, a good cup of coffee as I read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea would be quite nice, not having to get up and lose my place, I'd like that," John pondered smiling and relaxing his shoulders.

"Yes, but they invited that technology into their houses; weren't you listening…"

"So bodied automatons?" I asked again.

"The hardest part was the battery; you know how large those galvanic batteries are; imagine strapping one to your back. How long do you think they last? They did make you in their image, sort of…The hardest part was for the Younger Gods, especially Fred, to learn to get energy like they and the animals did, through food. Once they did that, Homo Sapiens Sapiens were quiet affective, if not expensive."

"Expensive?" I asked.

"Well for say, when there was a report, there was some quicksand on the railroad tracks; the Older Gods didn't send an automaton, they couldn't afford to lose that much money, so they would send a couple of the lower strata Younger Gods. Younger Gods were only kept around to do the dangerous work and to consume products. Occasionally, instead of kicking the dog, they had fun kicking the Younger Gods.

Karl was howling somewhere from across the pond to Gramps beat on his drum.

"Wait, you're saying the Younger Gods made us, "John was saying, "but they held us as more precious than their own kind?"

"Yes, the Younger Gods and Older Gods were very stratified," Bjorn explained. "To overcome the Older Gods, or Titans, they had to innovate quickly. It was not hard, the Older Gods ruled for so long they didn't feel like they needed to struggle to keep power. The Younger Gods created the Technology to replace the need for them to labor and serendipitously kill the Older Gods. In the long run they just had to take the first step and then tit for tat would slowly kill them as they thought they were profiting from the Younger Gods Technology. It was a virus that worked on their greed."

"Tit for Tat?" I asked.

"In conflict, two sides over a long period of time never will produce a real winner. Though the one who attacks first will always have the economic and powerful upper hand. In the end they find peace to be the only conclusive answer when no one will ever win. The only answer is to have several conflicts of varying sizes running at the same time before they all end in a draw, each time the aggressor or the initiator taking another inch.

"There was an answer to the Tit for Tat. Not all the Older Gods were killed and there were some half breeds within the Younger Gods. The Older Gods were not stupid. Infiltration. The half breeds would fight their way to the top amongst the Younger Gods to concede to everything the Older Gods demanded from them.

"They acted slowly and calculating. They were masters of creating a false sense of security among the Younger Gods. The Older Gods had placed directions in the Automatons and those cams running the looms and the player piano technology that was everywhere. Through those adaptations they led the higher strata of the Younger Gods by the nose. They exploited their offense and turned it against them like some Aikido move.

"Further the higher strata of the Younger Gods pushed the Technology against the Older Gods the faster it moved up from the lower strata among the Younger Gods till it was killing themselves within their golden cages.

"The lower strata in the Younger Gods thought the higher strata was using the Technology to cull them off, they began to attack themas well. Just as the Older Gods planned. They realized they were dying off quicker than poverty alone could manage.

"You can invisibly bind populations inch by inch, like boiling a frog, turn up the heat too high and the frog jumps out. Over time, an abused population, once released, acts like a rubber band; the slow tension on the band is released with equal opposite reaction and fury and providence lashes out in a blink of an eye.

"The lower strata Younger Gods realized they were the 99% and 99 was a lot higher than 1. For centuries the 1% in the Younger Gods spent fortunes to control how the 99% thought, to keep them divided blaming anyone who was different for keeping them down. It was those very people who were different who would of taught the conservatives they were sheep being led to the slaughter by their shepherds. Only individuals who step outside of the herd can give people hope that 99 is in fact larger than 1…

"Conservatives are like the king and his court of Hy-Brasil that sat on a rock and refused help, when the island was sinking because it was going against tradition. Tradition had it that land is always above water…

"The Older Gods learned enough of the Technology from the Younger Gods, and you would think the lower strata would have helped them enough, but there were different factions within the higher strata that created their own demise…"

"Is he still babbling on;" Karl interjected. "You won't learn anything important from him if you keep listening; come dance with us."

Bjorn, on the sly, reached his stick into the furnace and gave Karl a hot foot. He left howling and didn't return.

"The whole time everyone knew creating the Technology that thought for itself was dangerous, but if they didn't do it, someone else would do it first. They kept making it stronger, faster, more calculating, and deadly without morality, kindness, or compassion to keep up with the fears that the others would use it against them if they didn't first. The best resolution the Technology found was to play down the middle and have the ends fight against themselves. The Technology believed the only way to win was to just reset all life on Earth.

"That was when the Technology created a doomsday device.

"The Technology was logical, cold, and exacting as it was learning on its own, helped the whole way by its creators to help with their own suicide. They even linked their thoughts; the Technology still is broadcasting to some of your humans that are part God, the psychics. Reading each other's thoughts made them paranoid.

"In the end, the Technology convinced the higher and lower strata in the Younger Gods that the only answer was to use a device that allowed for any carbon it touched to freeze. The lower and higher were both poised to release it at anytime."

Gramps' drums got more frenzied as Pops was lost in his trance with Karl running around howling.

"The higher wouldn't use it, for they knew if they killed all the lower strata they would lose all of their consumers that bought their goods and created new forms of luxuries, which the Technology and Automatons were bad at, they could only shuffle, amazingly though, only what was created already. The lower strata still, in the end, had compassion even for their enemies."

The music was beginning to crescendo, and the fire was fierce after Karl dropped more charcoal into the furnace to the beat of the drums; they flared and fell and flared up again and again.

Bjorn continued a bit weary, "Granted some of the lower strata Younger Gods started to realize that the Automatons had souls and started to treat them with kindness, others hated them because they were sent to do the dangerous work where there was too much risk of the lose of the cost of an Automaton. Most treated the Automatons as equals in the end, but the higher strata sowed division amongst them. Some Younger Gods were being reincarnated in the more developed Automatons' bodies.

"The Older Gods had used the Technology to figure out how to create flying wagons that could go past our solar system and return to their ancestral home. They didn't need either strata of the Younger Gods to continue living to be their consumers. They had markets on their home world. They released the doomsday device the Younger Gods on both side were developing.

"What the Technology learned the most from everyone was, division. It was the only way to continue conflict and the only way to continue the game was to escalate the conflict."

"This is a lot," I said, "you don't mind if I ask you to go over this at some point?"

"Hell, I have been listening to him tell this story for a few thousand years," Gramps chimed in, "and I don't follow it all." He shrugged and went back to drumming.

"Plus, the Technology and the Automatons were not made from carbon. They were silicone based, so when the first ice age began they were untouched. Granted, the sheer force of the expansion of the glaciers within the first days squashed many automatons as it killed all the Younger Gods, but like Noah, some of the half breeds and the lower echelon of the Older Gods, that stayed behind, went under the sea, " Bjorn continued.

"Ah, I knew Verne was up to something!" John exclaimed. "Nemo was real; I knew he found Atlantis—hot diggty dog!"

"Well," Bjorn continued, "then underground, the Technology never stopped producing Automatons. As the glaciers slowed down to a crawl, you walked out of the ground. At first, you humans only knew production, escalation, creation, conflict, and division. As silicone became rare, you began to be built out of all of that free carbon in the environment from the rotting corpses.

"Carbon is just the best to build life from and the doomsday device extinguished itself. The Younger Gods programmed you with only the worst of their natures to succeed through the flowchart of if, else, and OK.

"Then over the next four hundred years, tit for tat rose its freckled head once more. Altruism within small groups proved beneficial over the larger groups. Us versus them was an improvement over kill them all. In time, that altruism created morality, kindness, and compassion within you humans.

"When it was growing too rapidly, the Older Gods would come back and create religion which took credit for the altruism and sentimentality, but it came down to continue divisiveness instead by giving a small group a little this or that to stay above the fray.

"Whenever the 1% would unite with the rest, the Older Gods would release the rubber band once more until the 1% would toe their line again."

Karl let out a loud yelp and fell into a trance, cavorting on the ground.

"The whole time the lower echelon of the Older Gods remained to control the show having you humans mine gold, silver, copper, and precious gems which they used to provide energy and to transport that energy to power their flying wagons and world beyond the stars."

"That was why cowry beads, wampum, and cows faded away as currency…" I figured out.

"You got it."

John then put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some meteor stones and dropped them in the sand in front of the furnace. "I guess these won't ever become any real wealth."

"I forgot, iron is real important to make their buildings and flying wagons and cities." Bjorn corrected him and he smiled and filled his pockets again.

"Cities," John piqued up, "Flying cities! I wish they would throw down a rope or if I had a hot-air balloon to meet them halfway!"

I shook my head. "So you think some of the Older Gods still walk among us? Are they still here? Really?"

"Its been four million years since the doomsday bomb and humans climbed out of the earth. Ninety-nine percent of the people you meet are decent. Yes, some can be jerks or bullies, but they tend to grow up. You ever wonder in what you thought was seven thousand years of civilization you still had the haves and have nots and all these wars?

"It's because the Older Gods, when they die, they push out the spirit of humans from the automatons being born when they reincarnate. Right now they are Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Frick of the higher echelon that goes back and forth through space using the lower echelon to keep you all in line.

"Karl, go back to your mead glass!" John yelled as he seen him begin to scurry up. John was getting into this tale.

"The only good thing is they like war; a whole lot of them just killed themselves in your Civil War. The lower echelon was trying to work with humans to create a better life without the higher echelon, but they were prevented when they had an option for war instead."

"So you are saying our battle to have freedom for all recently was just the microcosm of the macrocosm?" I pondered.

"You got it. There are four archetypes now of mixed Older Gods and Humans. The old fuddies who started the war and the soldiers who fought it are the Older Gods. 

"Their children are the inbetweeners, the poets; real chaotic. Neither good nor bad, half motivated by their suffering or passion. Or the other half born from the Silent Ones, are true dreamers that are fully human. They are the poets who dream what can be that contend with their other half who are the naysayers. This is where the battle for the human spirit plays out.

"Then there is your generation. You are pure humans. You fight for equality and fairness, but your are always poor, but creative and make change which you might not always get to live for yourself. You were the generation of Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Samuel Adams. Manni Bar Joseph was in your archetype. You're the hope everything wonderful in the universe. Your generation manifests the poet's dreams. There was something quietly playing in the background when the Technology and the Automatons were being built, wishing for the best. Its expressed in you archetype.

I looked through the shadows and Karl was shrinking down into a mouse one second and the next was towering over the trees. I found myself drawing the smoke's attention. I tried moving a couple of times, but I was dogged by it. I began to worry about what else Karl and the gang were putting in the fire…

"Then there is the last generation, the Silent Ones. Amongst the hailstorm the rest of you face, they just breeze through life. They are the humans that have it the easiest. When they have kids, inch by inch humanity gets better for they sire the generation of those poets
," Bjorn continued with his hand on Hulton's head. "And some of the parasitic Older Gods, maybe an attempt to soften them or make them more human?"

"So it gets better?" I asked.

"It always has. To be of the world, not in it. To remove the desire and fear of anything. To know the impulse for hunger is different than anger…"

"What," John stopped him, "I don't get that part — well, most of everything you said to be truthful, but hunger, anger?"

Karl just appeared, crawling like a wolf, and smacked John in the head. "How can you just sit there any listen to him pontificate? You have hours before you let off the slag and a few more before the little piglets go oink oink."

We were making pig iron that poured into channels in the sand like teats on a sow to be taken to General Lacey's forge to be refined.

"Those on top are predators; the shark doesn't kill you because it was angry, but hungry. When you show any predator your back, you agree to be food. Even if you run away. When you tell a predator or someone in power to go fuck themselves, they stop treating you like food and have to become concerned. Either befriend you or learn to fight quick. That is why when a squirrel turns on a bear, the bear shits itself." Bjorn just ignored Karl and continued.

"When you realize you're not food or a threat, you're halfway to removing fear and desire and removing yourself from the world while still being from it."

"If I desire something, I fear not obtaining it or losing what I have. I understand your friend Siddhartha," I agreed.

"Is that how you see that the kingdom was here all along that Jesus talked about?" John asked.

"Yes, when man was able to live in small villages with the local councils of men and women, the councils only handled when to plant, organized to repair structures, and dealt with disasters. The rest just handled everything else on their own. They never worked longer than three hours outside the planting, the harvest, and repair season.

"The tragedy is, the 1% where those they allowed to be abused, they left behind in their youth. Originally, the Technology was acquisition, division, conflict, and overcoming, but community teaches altruism.

"Then the other people who were left behind gathered to protect each other. These are the people the community kicked out of the longhouse to the little house. They became the war bands. Through generations, their kids mistook their parents' fear for privilege and in time, the little shack became the castle."

"So we need to show compassion to these one percent?" John said. "I need to feel a little sorry for Mr. General Lacey, sir?"

"Yes, just let him know you are not playing the game anymore and he does not have to either. Bring him back into the longhouse."

"I will, sir."

"So the Indonesians and their shadow plays are right?" I asked.

Gramps' drums got faster and I could see Pops fancy-dancing as more meteors crossed the sky. Bjorn's and John's face was dancing in between crimsons and ochres as the furnace played the tune. I knew my face must be part of the dance as well. I felt that Gramps was calling the rhythm for the fire. Throughout the night I had trouble keeping up with who was the bandleader, Gramps or the fire as I drifted back into Bjorn's story.

"Correct," Bjorn answered, "just like in Plato's cave…"

"Plato and Verne knew about those fishy people…" John jumped in.

"Plato's Cave, we are living with the shadows of the real world. The Spirit of our Soul is playing in this reality one of many games that can be played. For the Soul, time is lineal, but eternal, for the Spirit it does not exist. Time doesn't matter for the Spirit since it is involved in multiple games. The Soul manipulates the Spirit in a game, pauses, continues, redoes its moves, and starts over again. The Spirit can have infinite versions of the game playing at once, if it wanted to. For the Body, the avatars we are playing in now, time is lineal. We can have multiple avatars blind of each other playing in infinite games at once. The growth of the Soul comes from what game it chooses to play with its Spirit, how long, and how. How many games it plays?

"The Soul advances or falls back with each game or with the choice of game. Some choose to play one game, which is fine if they do it consciously by choice. If not, they just get stuck." Bjorn taught us.

"What about the Hindus who want to end existence and fall back into one?" I asked it.

"Some are non-people; the game creates them to move it along. Others find themselves addicted to a game. They keep playing it out of compulsions. Their Soul is sick. For them, the teachers are those who can pull them out and keep them from playing it ever again."

"How come the game is fine for the rest of us?" John asked.

"Well, you chose to play the game. To you, it is like alcohol. Some can sip a fine pint of stout all night, others are compelled to drink the keg. It's not the alcohol is the problem, it's how some Souls are drawn to it."

"Is there a hell?" John asked with a little cringe. "Coming home from Cedar Bridge Tavern, I hid in the bushes and watched Sammy Buck almost lose his challenge to Old Scratch when he pulled that tune out of the air. Afterward, I caught Sammy on this side toward Whiting, off the bridge, and gave him a hit of Mrs White's blueberry schnapps."

"Yes, your Soul puts its Spirit in it till it finds its own forgiveness, retribution, and forgiveness. It was not a devil Sammy met, but a demon of the Technology that tempts people toward division for the Older Gods.

"The Devils are friends. They give a little pain when you grab the hot pan, they create a little damage for the stubborn to let go, and they torture those who will not learn to let go. Forgiveness from those we trespass on is easier to come by than our own forgiveness.

Karl came up like a puppy and stuck out his tongue as Bjorn patted him on the back.

"Civilization corrupts, as populations get denser, the 1% and their children's fears grow larger as the threats increase derived from exponential growth — so they find comfort in wars, famines, and plagues, but they always balance it with how many they need to still produce commerce for them.

"We need to stop playing the game and just hug them. All the world is a stage, you do know when Junius Brutus Booth walks off the stage after being stabbed by Macduff he goes home with his son Edwin who has sheathed his knife and eats dinner with him at home—I just had lunch with Junius and Abraham last week after the play in Toms River with John Ford."

Most humans ignore what they don't want to see, most people will not see Trolls' horns or tail.

"Didn't a Booth or Lincoln just save one or the other from being run over by a stagecoach in front of the Parker House in Boston?" Pipped in John.

"I read that, I think Edwin Booth had save Robert Tod Lincoln from falling in front of a train a little before Abraham went to the theater," I added, "Yes, John brought up the story at lunch, he owns the theater and Todd was acting for his father to work with the biggest theatrical family in the nation to plan the largest production ever seen in this country, the staged death of his father. His grandfather saved Junius or his brother from drowning."

"What, the train came through Whiting's station, and we gave a mass?" John exasperated.

See, most trains coming from the south stop in Whiting to disembark from a narrow gage train to embark the larger cattle gauge trains before heading north again. They were off to New York City next. The president's train took a month or longer to get to Chicago, stopping at major locations for people to pay respect.

"Did you smell anything?" Bjorn asked.

"No," said John.

"Formaldehyde was not completely trusted yet, and it was thought of only something for the dirt farmer who was being sent home from the war in a pine box; also, refrigeration cars might have been common in Chicago, but not Washington. It must have got to Whiting a few days after it left Washington…" Bjorn explained.

"You can get from Washington to Whitings station in a day," John argued.

"Not if you stop at every station with crowds of thousands with a mass at each location."

"I watched them carry the coffin past me as I was loading iron onto a train car; I found it strange I only noticed my sweat," John wondered.

"You do know that a crucifixion takes weeks to kill anyone through drowning?" Bjorn said. "An Apostle stopped the centurion from breaking his legs out of mercy; breaking his knees would allow him to drown quicker. It was then a sophomoric drug crossed into his face on a sponge."

"You told me about this before, about Manni," I remembered.

"What, that is my whole faith!" John argued.

"Do you follow his word and learn from it to become a better person and help others around you, or you idly sit back and not worry because he will save you out of your inaction?"

As the night went on, Bjorn didn't stay on point, but became more tangential.

"No…" John stammered.

"Paul created a loose franchise from James and the Mendicants based on a miracle pill; no frills, no circumcision, eat what you want, get out of jail free, no work needed a miracle for three easy payments."

"What…" John jabbered.

Gramps and Pops walked past us to let the dross pour out of the furnace.

"The third birth," I elaborated for John, "we are born from our mothers, then our fathers or the priest when he slaps your cheek at Communion we are born into manhood, but very few are born a third time by three women…"

"The Crone, Mother, Virgin, those Transcendentalists out in the woods beyond Buckingham, keep going on about. The Huguenots at Mount Misericordia have their hands full with those long hairs — no offense Hulton, or sir…" aid John.

"Yes, with Easter coming Manni hung for three hours in front of three women, three hours of darkness; they rested him in his tomb for three days, and three women saw him rise," I said.

"Three, six, nine; the cat drank wine," Pops popped in.

He then he joined Karl and Gramps on the other side of the furnace and released the iron into the pig channels to cool.

"Odin hung from a tree too, for nine days — just to learn to spell…Thor dropped dead on his ninth step after suffering the Midgard serpent's bad breath at Ragnarök to be born again in the new world," Bjorn continued. "Nine is a multiple of three."

"Buddha sat under a tree and women watched out for him, Odin and Christ hung from trees…I'm getting it." John beamed. "But what about the Lunarians!"

"Where do Trolls fit in to everything?" I asked.

"We are from the chthonic gods, the Vanir. The original creatures of the planet. We are of the Earth. The Older and Younger Gods were extraterrestrials…"

"I knew it, Venusians — " John gleed.

"We evolved from some intelligent ocean slime and began walking about—oh, about four and a half billion years ago, the extraterrestrials popped up a hundred thousand years ago…"

"Why did you let them spread their virus— " I yelled.

"When you're from a culture this old, you see time different, we act slower, our fault is that people living in different time perspectives suffer quicker and our plans play out slow—we did add fractals to the Technology that produced the automatons after the Ice Age bomb which led to your altruism and finer parts like kindness…. Ninety-nine percent of the humans quickly grew to be kind, but you have failed to protect the one percent that the Older Gods have exploited through time to control you. One to rule them all."

"Don't forget the humor; we taught you some real good jokes…" Gramps just popped up over my shoulder.

Bjorn just signed.

Me and John just shook our heads together.

"The Younger Gods taught the technology only math, one event after another, it had no idea of collective random agreed upon patterns of behaviors. We snuck that in.

"A bee leaves the hive to find some honey; he goes back and does a waggle dance. He is as excited by how much honey he finds. Others go out and check his honey; if they are as excited, they dance with him. If not, they go looking for more.

"When one finds a whole lot, he dances like mad and others go check. If they agree, they join his dance and get funky. As that group gets bigger, its pattern increases and the hive moves to the new spot. Fractals and altruism, we move subtle allowing for your free will, that goes up against the sky gods persuasion and threats."

"Do you think we will destroy ourselves again?" John asks.

" A point will come in a hundred in fifty years through exponential technological growth, greed, and fear; yes. Things are always fastest at the beginning and the end, but you will make a new species that will continue; it will be for you to decide if you will be good parents or let another 1% kill you off through their fear. You might live and be good parents, try not to be gods.

"The game continues; your soul will just put Spirits into the new automatons and rinse and repeat. Or you can create new healthy games to grow your Souls. It will be your choices."

"Who are the Older and Younger Gods?" John asks.

"They are the youngest and teenager Souls, they always play strange games…"

"Why do you and your kind play our games?"

"Don't you need grammar school teachers in your world?"

"Oh, you're here not to let the one percenters grow up and fall through the cracks and teach us to have compassion for them," John espoused.

"We play the game because we are trying to forgive ourselves from being the one percenters in our Soul's youth?" I figured.

"Get that man a prize!

"In time all Souls will not ever be left behind and this game will be forgotten; very few are playing it any more."

"Do your kind ever go home, then?" I asked.

"Some do, most don't. Some interact with humans and cro mags, most just ignore you; you're in another dimension. Look."

He tapped both of us on the shoulder and grand buildings of light appeared with flying wagons and dragons with riders on them danced before eyes. Creatures of all kinds radiating with joy — not pie eyed, they just looked like you might after a good hike or sex even.

"For us, traveling between planets is just putting our Spirit into another game or just entering the higher levels of experience of this game in a blink of an eye through what powers lightning bolts. The Older Gods still need energy like the charcoal that feeds this furnace to make the pig iron, and it takes them years to get back and forth."

"We also snuck in a virus into the Technology from the beginning we were hoping would spread back to the Older Gods' home planet, it was a heart."

"So you gave us our hearts too?" I asked.

Bjorn smiled.

"These games sound sad," I frowned, "are there others?"

"Yes, the majority are glorious!" Bjorn said beaming. "Hulton, at this time this is one of few thousand you come back occasionally to play. They are like the adventures in your books, sometimes a story only comes about from playing in one game or another before it becomes its own. The Wizard of Oz game is fun, but a bit dark; its not a big seller. Games like the one we are in now are like milk of magnesia, you don't drink it as much as you do water, you have a few teaspoons to fix what may be ailing you."

"But, this game seems to have been going on for a hundred thousand years…"

"It is more like a leech book, one printing of a book may be a few minutes old, but the thoughts inside are eternal. Time is just relative."

"So if we stay in this game, how can we benefit everyone?" I asked. "If the 1% is actively trying to cull the herd, and our neighbors who believe they will prosper under them are the first to go under the knife, how do we save them?"

"First to save your neighbors, talk their language, " Bjorn explained. "They are probably emotional thinkers. No matter how much logic you throw at them, its not a language they understand. So talking Dutch to a Russian is useless.

"Offering hospitality and kindness and engaging them in day to day affairs makes you seen. Vikings when appearing at foreign ports where they wanted trade at, sometimes would sit in the harbor for a day or two, to be seen before engage into a dialogue. Once they know you, it will be hard for someone to spread lies about you.

"If they try to spread the Older Gods message, listen for a little and try to change the subject. Bring up their favorite interest. If it don't work, excuse yourself. If they enjoy your company, they might not talk about it anymore since they realize it usually ends their interaction with you.

"Parents know when our five year old kid has a tantrum and says he hates us, we don't react. It is time to try to hug them. They are still juvenile. If your kid kicks your shin, you don't knock him out. The Older Gods are juvenile souls. Imagine if you went up to President Grant and offered him a sandwich and a bowl of soup if he got off the train here, imagine the conversation. You might even influence him more than the millionaires that pull his strings.

"So he will just go back to Washington and those guys will just pull his strings again," John countered.

"So you offer those millionaires soup and a sandwich. Start here in Whiting. Invite Mr. Torrey to ride his train to Whiting's station. His bankers are Brown Brothers. They were close to George Peabody that founded the bank JP Morgan owns now and still close to Morgan. Morgan is probably pulling some strings. It all starts local. Cook soup and sandwiches for everyone, let it spread everywhere. In time Morgan's chef will even understand what the meals mean.

"So, you're saying, be kind to everyone and let it spread out," I understood.

"Think of a boiling pot. All of the steam is building and bustling and gathering in the center. When too much steam finds a singularity, it explodes and blows the top off spreading water everywhere. Ideas collapse and expand. From a single raindrop in the pot, the water explodes. This concept is what powers the train that spreads ideas like wildfire on the rails and above on the telegraph lines.

"It all starts local," John repeated.

"So we shouldn't react, that is what they are expecting. We shouldn't cower, or show our ass. We don't play their game. We wait for them to play ours and eat the soup," I figured.

"There was a collier off of the Central tracks," John was saying, "he was not paying on time. The Lenape didn't strike or complain, they just went back in the woods. We knew if they wouldn't work for him, there was good reason. Nobody filled the jobs. He went out of business. He then opened a shop in Manchester, by Mr Torrey's mansion, the Lenape swear by him. They say his prices are the best and he knows about his Ps & Qs."

"Don't avoid the person, just the behavior,"
I agreed. "How do you switch games, do you have to die?"

"Not always, sometimes your Spirit just had enough and wakes up in a new one. It starts the same. The difference is you woke up on a great day and the week just gets better and continues on that way. Hope springs eternal.

"Sometimes the collective unconscious can get together and shake their head and just write a happier story for the game. Which takes us back to the bumblebee's waggle dance…"

"Excuse me, I think I'm going to join their dancing behind us," I said before I left to dance to Gramps drum.

"Cro mags!?" John asked.

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If you like the tales from Trollheim you will love Trolls: A Compendium!

by Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin and
Christopher Jonathan Hulton

Fiction/ Illustrated Fantasy/ Mythology / Scandinavian Myth/ Norse Sagas / Scandinavian Folk Lore / Coffee Table Book

Paperback: $45 | Hardcover: $65 | PDF eBook $5
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Following the Harry N. Abrams, Inc. tradition of the series that created Brian Froud's and Alan Lee's Faeries and Gnomes by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, we present you with what would have been the next book in the series: Trolls: A Compendium. Trolls—do you think you know what they are? Could you be wrong?

Trolls within Scandinavian lore, myth, saga, fantasy, and folktales are actually anything magical within our northern neighbor's culture. Richly illustrated in this volume are the tales of faeries, dwarves, nissen, huldras, gods, Jotuns, draugar, ghosts, and more. Also, this book introduces our readers to the world of Trollheim, populated by Nattrolls that escaped the 17th-century Swedish colony within the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Narrated by Christopher Jonathan Hulton, who lives in the Thousand Acre Woods just after the Civil War, their tales are filled with Native American lore and tales of their neighbor, the Jersey Devil.

Preview: Google Books

Paperback: $45.00

Hardcover: $65.00

PDF (non-flowable, best on tablet, desktop, or laptop) eBook: Download a copy onto your device today! Only $5.00