Chapter 02 - A Most Unusual Job Offer

Well, as I said before, by the time September rolled around we were pretty sick of Iraq.  We were starting to get bored with the current routine.  We had been occupying our days with resting and our nights with counter-ambush raids on any insurgents we were lucky enough to find setting up improved explosive devices, or IEDs, on the side of the road or taking up ambush positions.  This didn’t happen very often.  The insurgents were very sneaky and quiet and seemed to know we were coming from miles away, even if we got out of our vehicles and hunted them on foot.

We had endured the entire summer like this.  The weather hovered between 110 and 130 degrees Fahrenheit every stinking day, making sleep nearly impossible without fans blowing on us, and the nights were usually quite boring, interspersed with one or two successful raids or counter-ambushes a week.  All I wanted to do was go home to a place that didn’t have triple-digit temperatures, where I didn’t have to wonder if I might get blown up or shot, and where I didn’t have to drag around an automatic rifle everywhere I went.  Oh, and weekends and holidays off would be nice.

History told us that this was the cradle of civilization, but I felt it was the gateway to hell.  If we all of the sudden were to find some gigantic hole in the desert where lava and demons were pouring out, I didn’t think I would have been surprised.

After one particularly empty, uneventful night, we were headed back to our camp.  We lived in an abandoned Iraqi military base just north of Baghdad, although if the army wanted us to hunt for ambushes somewhere else, we’d set up camp at another location and fan out from there.  Most of the time we lived near Baghdad.  We seemed to catch the most insurgents around here.  The section I was a part of this particular night had gotten a little carried away and had just cruised and cruised further than we’d ever gone before.  The drive home would take us about three hours.  We had at least four towns to go through including a short drive through one of Baghdad’s outlying suburbs.

By 8:30 that morning it was already extremely hot, and we were anxiously looking forward to being back home, eating a good breakfast, and preparing for our daytime rest.  This usually consisted of lying in our underwear in a pool of our own sweat praying that there would be no electricity outage to stop the fans.  Still, this was better than being cooped up in a Humvee with the sounds of the throbbing, loud diesel engine and the stench of whatever village we were near.  Baghdad was especially awful, because the part we had to go through was basically a landfill the size of a small city.  Once we passed that, though, we could almost taste the eggs and feel the sleep take hold of us.

I was having an especially difficult time maintaining my concentration.  This time of the morning, combined with the steadily mounting heat and growling of my stomach caused me to more than once nod off for a split second, until my helmet banged into my rifle or the inside of the truck.  Shaking the sleep-monster off my shoulders, I reached for one of the military Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) and started tearing into one of the packages in order to give me something to do and to quell my stomach, which I almost could hear over the motor.

All of the sudden the Humvee in front of us exploded, breaking into pieces and partially demolishing a white Toyota pickup going the other way, filled with half a dozen farmers on their way to the town we just left.  The force of the explosion and shock of seeing our companions evaporate before our eyes in a ball of flame caused the vehicle I was in to lose control and flip over into a ditch.  As it was rolling over, it threw me out of the rear passenger seat, and I flew about twenty feet into a puddle of blood, motor oil, and glass from the mess in front of us.  The vehicle behind us thankfully was able to come to a stop under its own power, and its occupants were ready to kill the enemy, searching the fields on each side of the road.  At this point I realized I was uninjured – bruised, scraped up, barely able to hear, and nauseous, yes, but able to move. I quickly rolled out of the mess to check on the driver.  He had an earache and some glass imbedded in his cheek, hand, and uniform sleeves, but otherwise he was alive and kicking.  Just as the awful reality and grief over our destroyed companions – consisting of the entire infantry team – were about to set in, the ambush began in earnest.

We guessed it would come from the right side where numerous shallow ditches ran parallel to the road at varying distances from us – the perfect set of trench lines from which to attack.  However, our enemy decided to take a risk and surprise us.  Either that or they were stupid.  Sometimes it was hard to tell.  They had hidden themselves on the other side where it was virtually flat except for some small bushes and rocks.  If surprise was their intent, it worked.  Some of the ‘rocks’ sprang to life and began shooting away at our backs.  My truck’s driver and the machine gunner in the third truck’s turret went down at once.  The six of us remaining were now outnumbered and in a bad position to defend against the seven attackers.  An eighth attacker had been severely wounded when his own roadside bomb detonated in an explosion that was obviously much larger than he had expected, but the remaining insurgents were far cleverer than their bomb-maker.  We instantly realized that we could still make it out alive if we could get off the road, so we charged into the seven in an attempt to startle them.  We almost succeeded.  Our middle man, Major Banta himself, armed with a pistol and some long knife he had whipped out from somewhere, shot a machine gunner in the neck and kicked his assistant hard in the head before stabbing him in the chest.  To his left our other companion, Sergeant Quincy Brown, the Engineer team leader, shot another attacker dead and seriously wounded the fourth attacker before getting shot in the arm by the fifth.  I had two people in front of me, numbers six and seven, one of which I disabled with a short burst to the torso.  He was the one who had shot my truck’s driver.  The other one I smashed with the butt of my rifle, having emptied my rifle’s first magazine into his partner and all over the ground nearby.  I drew out another magazine to load, but his partner, whom I mistakenly thought was dead, rolled over and shot me in the arm and leg.  I pulled out my knife to stab the one I had butt stroked, but he wasn’t dead either.

On the other side of Major Banta, three of our people had made it across the road and were attempting to flank the enemy, but the machine gunner the Major left for dead used his last remaining ounce of life to detonate a suicide vest, taking out himself and our three flankers who unwisely bunched up.  Now there were three of us and four of them, all seven badly wounded.  Sergeant Brown went to first check on our blown up comrades and then to take out the severely wounded bomb making insurgent.  He was not fully incapacitated, which Brown found out the hard way, taking a few shots to the chest and neck before shooting his attacker in the face.  Both of them were now truly dead.  While the Major was busy finishing off his attacker and getting a little more shot up in the process, I grappled with the two remaining insurgents as they attempted to subdue me and slit my throat.  They had disarmed me and pushed me to the ground while one of them pulled out a machete.  The Major, now severely wounded, was crawling toward us and managed to shoot the one with the blade before expiring.  Now I was through, though.  The final attacker was in far better shape than I was, having minor gunshot wounds and only a small gash in his arm and a big bruise on his head.  He was wearing body armor, and when his machete-wielding partner went down, he released me and picked up an AK-47 with a bayonet fixed to the front.  He aimed it at my head and pulled the trigger.  Click!  He was out of ammo!  I jumped to my feet and charged him, ready to tear him apart with my bare hands, body armor or no, but I fell over in pain after moving a few steps nearer.  Apparently my arm and leg wounds were worse than I thought.  Plus I couldn’t see out of my left eye.  He then smiled maliciously at me, raised the bayonet end of the rifle and prepared for the killing he was so eager to conclude.

At that instant we both noticed the arrival of someone, and each reacted differently.  I felt a great relief spread over me, even though I had no reason to think this unidentified person would or could help me against an armed insurgent.  My attacker looked truly scared however, something that baffled me even more when I saw that our visitor was a mere shepherd with a bunch of sheep in tow.  The insurgent dropped his rifle, fell to the ground on his knees and started to shake all over.  Why would a battle-hardened guerrilla fighter be scared of a poor, unarmed animal herder?  He had one opponent left alive – me, barely – and some local yokel to deal with.  Nonetheless, the shepherd swiftly walked toward us, showing no surprise or fear at what he beheld.  He scolded the warrior harshly in Arabic and struck him in the ribs and back with his staff.  The fighter stood back up and took off into the desert, but he collapsed after about fifty feet as if he had been shot by a sniper, fainting head first into a bush and not moving.

The shepherd now turned to observe me.  He definitely looked pretty tough, but not scary.  He had scars covering his forehead and eyes, large bullet holes in his wrists and ankles, and various other scars on his legs, arms, and neck.  I figured he had been some Shi’ite separatist who had been tortured by Saddam.  He did not move to attack me, however.  He called out to his flock of sheep, to keep them from moving on, I presumed, though I could have sworn he wasn’t using Arabic.  Was he perhaps Kurdish?  Then he started tending my wounds.  They looked bad now that I had some time to reflect on them.  My blood had drenched the ground around me, especially where my head was.  As soon as the herder touched me, though, I ceased feeling much pain.  I also couldn’t move anymore.

At this point my day, which had begun normally and progressed tragically, took an unusual turn.  After he had dressed my arm and leg, he sat on a nearby rock and observed me for a minute.  Then he said in perfect English, “I’m Bar-Enash. I have a job for you.”

“Nice to meet you.  Uh, are you American?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“I travel a lot,” he answered enigmatically.  “Are you interested in working for me?”

“Um, I’m not sure my current employer would understand if I just up and quit in order to work for an international sheep herder,” I joked.  “Why on earth are you herding sheep in a war zone if you’re so well travelled?  There are plenty of animals in peaceful countries, too.”

“Tending sheep here is more interesting,” he responded dryly.  “Your current employer won’t need you anymore, by the way.  They want people who can still move and who haven’t lost so much blood.”

“They’re just minor wounds,” I said dismissively.  “My arm and leg aren’t even hurting anymore, although I really can’t even feel them.”

“You’re not feeling them because you are dead, my friend,” he stated, poking me in the chest with his staff, which I didn’t feel. “That rifle didn’t click because it was out of ammo.  The bullet went through your brain and killed you before you could hear the gunshot.”

“What?!  Then how could I possibly hear and see you carrying on this conversation?” I asked incredulously.  Then I noticed I wasn’t really moving my lips to speak.  Things were getting weird.

“You’re experiencing reality post mortem,” he explained, “If a living person were to walk by right now, they’d just see some crazy shepherd talking to a corpse.  Now, I’ve given you an offer to work for me.  If you accept, I will give you a new body – one that won’t age, get sick, or even suffer injuries.  Your five senses will be dramatically sharper, and you will be able to sense metaphysical things as well – a sixth sense as it were.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“You’ll sense ‘spiritual’ things.  You’ll be able to see and hear beings that are imperceptible in the physical world.”

“Wow!  Sounds pretty good,” I said, trying to humor him.  “Sign me up!  I hope being dead doesn’t put me at a disadvantage when you are considering other applicants, though.  Also, does this job come with medical and mental...I mean dental insurance?  Oh, and I should warn you, I’m deathly afraid of ghosts.”

He rolled his eyes at my sarcasm.  “I know this is hard for you to believe, and given the rather strenuous morning and violent death you’ve experienced, I sympathize with you.  Now, please imagine for a moment with your dead little brain that I am telling the truth, and take my offer seriously.”

“Well, I can’t move or breathe right now, and yet you’re communicating with me, insisting I’m really dead.  If you can do what you say, then yes, I would really like to work for you and receive a new body.  Could you make me a little taller, though?”

“Uh, sure, but I’m not going to make you so tall that you stand out.  You’ll have to be satisfied with average.”

That was fine by me, since I was a shade shorter than the norm.  Once I agreed to his offer, he struck me hard in the gut with his staff, muttering something in what I guessed was the same language he used on the sheep.  I remember the words “Enash” and “Elah,” which I later found out were Aramaic for “Man” and “God.”  My stomach was starting to smolder from his strike as my body rose in the air – detached from me!  I don’t know how better to explain it.  Instead of having an out of body experience where I’d go floating, around experiencing cool things, my body had an ‘out of me’ experience and hovered above me for a while.  I couldn’t breathe and felt extremely cold – the first sensations I’d had since my ‘death.’  Meanwhile, my body burst into flames but was not consumed.  I couldn’t feel the heat, just suffocation and extreme cold.  After about the longest minute of my life (or death), the flaming corpse floated back to the ground onto me and I instantly felt better.

I gasped what felt like the first breath of my life and felt warm again – extremely warm.  Summer in Iraq was the most brutal thing I had experienced, but this sensation was like being really near a bonfire or perhaps in an oven.  The sensation eventually wore off as my new body cooled.  Now that I could breathe, I could smell the stench of burning flesh.  I took a whiff of my arm, but whatever had caused the smell was not me.  Perhaps it was the burning of my old body, or more likely the burning of my companions in the destroyed Humvee behind us.

After a minute I could move again!  I jumped up and walked around a bit, feeling better than I’d ever felt in my life.  I was completely naked, but it didn’t matter.  There wasn’t a single scar or flaw on my body, except for a welt just above my navel where he had struck me with his staff.  That one scar never went away, but it was the only one I had.  All the other scars I had were gone – the one where I cut my hand with a piece of broken mirror, the small gash on my forehead I incurred when a ladder I was under collapsed, the bullet and knife wounds I had just recently received – gone.  Later on, people seeing my stomach thought I had two belly buttons and sometimes laughed at it, but this unusual stigma was easily hid.

I didn’t feel any discomfort, even though I was walking through very hot sand and rocks.  This isn’t to say I was dead to the feeling, but the extreme heat, blowing sand, and sharp rocks did not cause me any pain.  I could sense the various textures of the blowing sand around me.  The sand, rocks, and shrubbery on the ground were easily distinguishable without having to look at what I was stepping on.  I could also sense minor fluctuations in the air temperature, whereas before it all felt like the same stinking heat.  Best of all, the blowing sand and dust no longer caused my eyes to squint and tear up or my lungs to feel like I had inhaled a cactus.

I could also hear everything that was going on within what seemed to be a mile radius around me.  Not only that, but I could tell where things were and how far away they were just with my ears.  Just for fun, I closed my eyes and started running around trying to use echolocation like a bat.  After squawking like a parrot and tripping over some sand dunes, I reopened my eyes.  This skill obviously would take a lot of practice to perfect, yet I knew I’d eventually be able to make it work.

I could see tiny ants and flies moving around about as far away as possible before the earth curved away into the horizon.  It also seemed as though I could sense a greater spectrum of light.  Infrared and ultraviolet rays were suddenly visible.  This enhanced my vision, but it also would take some getting used to.  For now, I imagined this must be how things look when someone was on drugs.

I could smell in an unusual way, too.  I could locate things by the scent.  Shoot, with ears and a nose like this, who needed eyes?  I knew exactly where each body lay from the battle, I could tell how many sheep were there just by their individual scents, and I could smell the sand and asphalt and burning vehicles behind me.  I could even smell the partially cooked military rations I had been preparing for myself before the attack.  I had been pretty hungry before, but now I didn’t feel any need to go back and eat it.

I ran around a bit, feeling quite happy and more energetic than I had ever felt before.  I wasn’t sure, but I felt I was moving extremely fast – too fast for a normal person – especially one who was barefoot.  I’m quite sure anyone nearby would have been a bit freaked out by the sight of a completely naked man streaking through the desert faster than an automobile.  I dashed over to one of our trucks to test my strength some more.  Okay, I couldn’t lift the truck off the ground, but I certainly could move it around about as easily as a half dozen normal people.  After all these tests of strength and speed, I returned to the shepherd, feeling not the least bit exhausted.

The most unusual thing was the new sensation I was feeling.  I felt the presence of some sort of substance that had nothing to do with the physical things I was seeing, hearing, or smelling.  This is very difficult to describe, but this new substance I sensed immediately conveyed all the information I needed about it in one.  Whereas a normal person must be seen, heard, smelt, and felt to get a complete picture, this substance was complete.  Or perhaps I was merely sensing the substance with four or five metaphysical senses.  It was hard to tell.  Either way, there were other beings around that I could ‘see,’ ‘hear,’ and ‘feel.’  It must have been the metaphysical sensation the shepherd was talking about, for I could perceive the substance most strongly in him.  It was then that I finally realized who he was, because he seemed to be able to wield absolute control over everything around him.  The other beings I sensed definitely treated him with deference.  He seemed to just emanate power, control, and authority, so I fell down on my face and apologized. “I’m sorry for not realizing who you were before!  What would you have me do now, sir?”

“Stand up,” he said, chuckling, “I didn’t expect you to recognize me at first.  Anyway, I need to explain to you about the drawbacks of this job and describe what I want you to do.

“You will be spending an extremely long time as an observer for me.  I am sending you back to the beginning of all things.  You will be my recorder.  I want you to go about the universe and describe what you see from your human perspective.  I will record your thoughts for you, but if you wish to write, please do so.  You can mix with the societies you encounter and even get married, but realize that you will outlive everybody you encounter and will not be able to have children.  Your wives, friends, and acquaintances will all either grow old and die or get killed while you will just keep going on.  You will experience more tragedy than any human ever has or ever will.  Granted, you will be able to learn and experience nearly anything you want to know, but you will also understand the awful burden of such knowledge.  You may eventually wish you could just die and move on like everyone else, but you will abide until the end.  I will reward you richly for this job, but you will wait a long, long time for the treasure.”

Despite his dire description, I was excited about the job.  He sensed this and smiled. “You are very curious and eager to learn things.  You enjoy adventures, especially ones that don’t kill you.  I am sure you will be able to do this better than most.  Your memory will also work perfectly.  You won’t forget things.  This won’t always be a blessing, especially in times of war and death, but it is part of the job.  Most of your memories will be good ones, though.  As for your new, seemingly limitless energy – even though you will not tire except under the most extreme and extended periods of physical exertion, and you will recover your strength nearly instantaneously; you will feel another kind of tiredness – the tiredness that comes from a life with little rest and great, burdensome sorrows.”

“I’ll do it anyway,” I said.  He knew my curiosity would get the better of me and that I couldn’t really imagine anything capable of hurting me anymore.  All my life I’d been interested in science and history, and now I’d get to experience it.  Not only that, but I knew that if I were careful, I could collect enough wealth to live in luxury.  At that moment I was feeling really good in my new body, ready to take on the world.  Little did I know that I’d soon be plunged into the midst of something far greater and that I’d still scarcely survive.

“What about the future – I mean from this moment on?  What do I do when I come back around to this day and year?” I asked.

“Just meet me back here and you can resume your life as if nothing happened,” he answered.  “You’ll have to try to pretend you are still a twenty-five year old, relatively inexperienced person.  You’ll have to pretend you don’t understand the many languages you will learn, and you’ll have to be discreet with the large amount of wealth you plan on collecting.  In comparison to the amount of time you’ll have lived in the past, there won’t be much time left before the end of history at that point.  There won’t be much left for you to do.”

“How much will be left?” I asked.

“I’m not revealing the future to you.  I’ve done that before, and nobody ever understands what I’m showing them.  Your focus is on the past.  For a long time, you will not know what is happening, for it will be events that none of your historians covered.  Once you start experiencing events you have read about, you cannot tell people what you know.  Additionally please refrain from using English or any other modern language until they actually exist in the form you know.  Use that brand new brain I’ve given you to learn the local languages and dialects.  Also, you will see how much power I have in shaping history, for though you will occasionally try to alter things for the better, you will never really succeed unless I allow it.  Now if you’re ready, we shall begin.”