One Great Year

ONE GREAT LOVE, ONE GREAT ADVENTURE …

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Greenleaf Book Group Press
Austin, Texas
www.gbgpress.com

Copyright ©2014 Intelligent Design Publishing Inc.

All rights reserved.

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Cataloging-in-Publication data
(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)
Veitch, Tamara, 1969-
   One great year / Tamara Veitch, Rene DeFazio.--2nd ed.
     p.; cm.
   Originally published: Surrey, B.C. : Intelligent Design Publishing, 2011.
   Issued also as an ebook.
   ISBN: 978-1-62634-023-7
    1. Reincarnation–Fiction. 2. Memory–Fiction. 3. Soul mates–Fiction. 4. Good and evil–Fiction. 5. Fantasy fiction. I. DeFazio, Rene, 1963- II. Title.
PR9199.4.V458 O54 2013
813/.6                            2013940339

Part of the Tree Neutral
^®
program, which offsets the number of trees consumed in the production and printing of this book by taking proactive steps, such as planting trees in direct proportion to the number of trees used:
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Printed in Canada

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Second Edition

For all of those who have loved us on our path.

 

Our sincere thanks and appreciation to Shirley Anderson, Suzannah Denholm, Daryl Wakeham, and all of our friends and family who have aided and supported us on this journey. We offer our humble gratitude to the divine inspiration that has allowed this book to flow through us and to every reader who has chosen to spend his or her time in the world within these pages.

 

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.”

 

—A
TTRIBUTED TO
A
LBERT
E
INSTEIN BY
G
ILBERT
F
OWLER
W
HITE
¹

Present day, Seattle, Washington

Maxwell Quinn had been reincarnated an exhausting number of times. How many lives had he lived? He could hardly count them. He knew that the evolution of human existence followed patterns that cycled roughly every twenty-six thousand years. Plato had called it the “Great Year”
²
and Quinn knew the ancient concept well. He had lived through the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Ages that had come before and had descended into this dark, brutal Iron Age. Quinn searched the night sky, knowing that the precession of the stars was truly a clock. He hoped that the most difficult time in his obligation was over, give or take a few hundred years.

Quinn rubbed his forehead with the back of his thumb, ruffling his messy black hair. He lit a joint and took a few puffs, brushing a flake of ash from his Lenny Kravitz T-shirt. It helped to slow the constantly spinning filmstrip of his mind. He opened the window a crack and exhaled into the cool Pacific Northwest evening.

Quinn rented a small apartment in the outer suburbs of Seattle. The forested hills and fields filled him with peace. He watched a bulbous black spider outside his window as it repaired its web. It had been there for weeks. He had watched it climb, trap, and mend, over and over, up and down the delicate grid. Quinn observed the microcosm of the greater world and felt at one with the creature.

Quinn had done it all—travel, exploration, rebellion—but now he was tired of trying so hard. He was an old soul, and he was weighed down by the memories of all his lives before. He pushed away the voice that reminded him that lessons remained yet to be learned. Human hibernation was not a viable option, even for him.

Quinn was a loner, an orphan since his fifteenth birthday, when his parents had been killed in an automobile accident. He had gone to live with a bachelor uncle, but the relative hadn't had or wanted children, and since the age of seventeen he had been on his own. He had only his buddy Nate and a few casual friends in his life. At forty-five, love had eluded him. Quinn got by repairing computers from home. He had chosen a job that required little human interaction but which fed his incredible intellect at least slightly. He didn't desire material possessions, and he warily avoided the spotlight and notoriety, ever on the lookout for his adversary, Helghul.

Quinn shifted his attention to the television behind him. After a moment he snapped it off in disgust. He tossed the remote onto the chaotic pile of newspapers and books that had buried his sofa. Television aggravated instead of relaxed him. It was pure hype, supply and demand. The fear-mongering talking heads smiled and reported, barely aware of the words that they read: immense tragedy, war, corruption, political unrest, another big-bottom bimbo or celebrity overdose. Gossip and propaganda were pasted like wallpaper over the truths that protruded and begged for attention underneath. Consumers ate it up and grew fat on it, demanding more. What about the others, the individuals doing good work and seeking to better the world? Quinn refused to watch while they were largely ignored and the dark souls absorbed the spotlight.

Quinn blogged as “The Emissary” and spent hours every day surfing the Internet. The World Wide Web allowed ideas, hopes, and fears to be sent across the globe in a nanosecond. People shared and connected openly, and information was plentiful, though often erroneous. He searched for facts, for breaking scientific discoveries, and for signs that people were continuing to spiritually evolve. He followed changes in the world's weather patterns and kept an extensive spreadsheet on the natural disasters. Tragedy and devastation have a way of waking the soul, and Quinn was hopeful. He considered noteworthy people as they emerged and had boxes of haphazardly labeled information he had collected. He never opened them, relying instead on his comprehensive memory.

Quinn was not only looking for proof that the Dark Age was ending, but he was also tracking other Atitalans—Emissaries like himself from the ancient land who had been sent to guide mankind in its evolution. Many of the Emissaries were healers, musicians, scientists, artists, or teachers. They were the way-showers, laying clues for those who cared enough to seek spiritual growth. He could never identify fellow Emissaries for certain until he met them in person. Their special auras differentiated them like fingerprints but were rarely captured in photos and video, and if the karmic code did show up, the shot was usually discarded as overexposed. Seeing auras was no special skill. Quinn just knew what to look for. The human brain rejects ninety percent of what the eyes see,
³
but he knew how to see.

In Atitala, Quinn's name had been Marcus, and his Marcus-brain—a deep, ancient consciousness—was awake within him, constantly guiding, educating, and urging him to duty. Atitalan Emissaries had been sent to rebuild the world when the last Golden Age had ended. He assumed the others were active and contributing. He was confident that they were not sedentary, disgruntled, and stoned.

They don't know what I know
, Quinn justified to himself, taking a hard final drag of his tiny roach. He flicked the dying ember and dropped the scrap in a soda can.

The red light on Quinn's telephone flashed to indicate a message, but he ignored it. It could wait until tomorrow. He refused to carry a cellphone, refused to be constantly accessible—there was a self-importance, an egotism, and a hollow neediness attached to those things. He was not a cardiologist; no one was dying on the table. He had no inflated sense of individual significance, though he could have and perhaps should have.

Quinn positioned himself in front of his keyboard, and The Emissary began his blog for the night. He had it all figured out—the meaning of life, what comes next—and he saw that the answers were all around him. For centuries people had been handed the clues, and yet they continued to ignore them. Maybe his inconsequential blog would reach someone who needed it. Hopefully he was contributing to the ever-evolving collective consciousness. His compulsion to expose humankind to the obvious truths surrounding them would not be denied.

For the first twenty years of his adulthood, Quinn had tried to ignore the obligation that weighed on him. He had traveled the world searching for an elusive spirit, one he had loved deeply beyond all others. Quinn's Marcus-brain urged him to seek out his soulmate, Theron, as he had for centuries. Despite his searching, Theron had not been found—not this time, not yet.

First Love

Theron lay limp in Marcus's arms, her eyes closed and her breathing ragged. “I thought you left me,” she sputtered.

“I will never leave you,” he promised.

Their wet skin was freckled with sticking sand. Marcus's chest heaved as he stroked her dripping hair. She was all length and limbs in his arms. He noticed the odd angle of her bloodied leg and protectively squeezed her against his muscular chest. He shuddered with the realization that he had almost lost her.

Above them, in the shadows on the edge of the excavation, stood a fair-haired young man unnoticed in the commotion. Helghul watched his fellow students with eager interest. He had heard Marcus call for assistance, yet he had remained still, fighting the impulse to aid the troubled pair. His conscience beseeched him to help but he had resisted, his mind in turmoil. His will had been torn as he had contemplated what it would mean to be rid of her.