Chapter 33: A Temple of Wood

AS WE SAILED among the islands and up the eastern coast of Asia, I found more and more texts to collect in my library. Various forms of paper had been manufactured throughout Asia for many years. Their inks and the calligraphy of their texts were fascinating. Some were mystical texts, religious, scientific, and some few that were fanciful flights of imagination and poetry. In addition to the texts, I found willing librarians who would come to the infinity room to teach and share.

Buddhism was spreading at about the same pace that we were moving, so as we progressed, I taught martial arts to people who were willing and interested. I found people who could build on these arts and make them their own, just as they built on the religious teachings and made those their own. As the arts evolved, we brought more teachers into the infinity room and my women became masters who went out into my world to teach others. We taught the mantras and meditations, but since there were no gods in our world, they played a role only as teaching legends rather than real people. I even found some mentions of myself as one of the many legends in the greater infinity room. I wasn’t sure what to think of that.

I reached the coast of Nihon about the same time as Buddhism. We traded all up and down the string of islands and I taught what I knew. I was summoned at one point to the palace of the prince regent. This prince had adopted Buddhism readily, blending it with the Shinto religion. This made sense to me. I had seen places where a religion was spread by decree or by bloody warfare. In the long run, the gods of that religion were irrelevant to the local people. The stories of those gods took place long ago and far away.

Imagine, if you would, what it would be like if I tried to spread the religion of Ninra and Namri throughout the world today. The stories I told of how the god and goddess had protected Bathra from the invading Assyrians would mean nothing to the people of the southern continent of America where I found myself in the middle of the second millennium AC (After Caesar). And thankfully, the god and goddess had never asked that their religion be spread farther than our valley. We even rebuilt the temples of the other gods who were worshiped there. Instead of conquering other religions, the precepts of the religion were taught to the people and the local gods were maintained. That made sense.

I taught in the palace, spreading the martial arts to the prince’s army, and blending in the martial arts they already had. And I had many happy conversations with the prince about how things were in other parts of the world.

“Bob, I think we should have a temple. A temple and a place where the arts can be taught. You know, where Buddhist monks can be trained,” the prince said.

“That is a noble endeavor, my prince. We would need a place with good stone and I could build a ziggurat as they have in India.”

“We don’t have good stone and what we have is used to build defenses. We have a lot of trees, though. Could you build a temple out of wood?” he asked.

That was an interesting puzzle. Most houses were built of wood and the structural elements were sound. I asked leave to study the problem and promised to return to the prince in ten days.

I hiked out to a hill overlooking the site the prince indicated was where he wanted the temple built. There, I found a cave where I could conceal myself and enter the infinity room. Of course, the first thing I needed to do was satisfy the desires of my harem, but I immediately set my librarians to work finding how to construct a temple of wood. Remarkably, they had many examples of wooden structures and the Japanese librarians who recently joined us showed a long tradition of wooden buildings in the country—some very large.

I returned to the prince at the appointed time and showed him the drawings I had made for the temple grounds. He approved and appointed me to be the architect of his new temple.

I had missed building things. I had not been so happy since constructing the pool in Babylon. I employed many people, refusing to have anyone work on the temple who was forced labor. The temple was built as several buildings around a courtyard that connected to the prince’s palace so he could attend the temple without leaving his grounds.

When the great gong rang at the temple’s entrance just a year later, it was a day of great celebration. Teachers moved in and I moved out, slipping away to my boat on the western shore of the island. I decided to go north and cross Asia by land. We sailed the little boat up a river until it was no longer passable and I sold it to begin hiking north to find what treasures could be located inland.

Forward a thousand years or so. It seems I’ve been building things all my life, so it was only natural that in the latter part of the twentieth century, I found a place in North America to build houses. And I’ve met interesting people wherever I went.

“Now, Bob ... Can I call you Bob? Bob, I have just three words for you. These are the most important words you’ll hear today, Bob. Term. Life. Insurance. Now I can tell by the look in your eye that you’re thinking, ‘I’m young. I’m healthy. I’m going to live forever. What do I need life insurance for?’ I’ll tell you, Bob. This isn’t about you. This is about caring for and providing for your loved ones.”

I’m not sure why Brenda, my secretary, let him into my office. I’d have to have a discussion with her when we returned to the infinity room. I’d hired her locally, but it didn’t take long for her to become a concubine. She still came out on some days to run the construction office.

I glanced at the card he’d handed me. ‘Douglas Pierpont III, Licensed Insurance Agent.’

“Do I know you, Doug?” I asked.

“Oh, I get that a lot, you know. Most everyone in town knows me. I’ve insured most of them. This is a town of people who care for their loved ones, and that’s why I’ve come to talk to you.”

I’d left San Francisco in the mid-70s after the Nixon fiasco. The war in Viet Nam was winding down and we were in a booming economy. It was time for me to adopt a new body and a new persona. I’d chosen this midwestern suburb as a place where I could get back to what I loved to do and build things. In this instance, houses. I bought a nice tract of land and got it zoned residential, then started building. The area had been growing out here south of the city and the local authorities welcomed my development with open arms. I had the land surveyed and started putting in the infrastructure within a year of arriving. The city had all the utilities installed and had inspected our streets. We hired local contractors to do the work, all by the book, as the city commissioners were prone to say.

I could have paid for everything at once and had a new neighborhood built by my people in the infinity room in days. But in this country, that was not the way to do business. I hired all union contractors and they knew I personally inspected every project every day. Houses started going up. I had a reputation of building luxury homes starting in the low $40s.

And into my office walked an insurance salesman.

That was something else I had to deal with that was new for me. Everyone wanted their piece of the pie, so to speak. If I chose the wrong supplier, work surprisingly slowed down as half the materials were discarded as ‘inferior grade’ by my foremen. I was sure Brenda probably knew this salesman and had ushered him in because he was her uncle’s wife’s cousin who sold her grandfather his policy. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. By this time of my life, I’d met thousands and thousands of people and it wasn’t unusual for me to be reminded of an old acquaintance by a new acquaintance. I quickly learned not to say, “You look just like a eunuch I knew in Nebuchadnezzar’s harem with a crooked tooth and wandering eye.” That usually got a blank stare and a nervous laugh before the new acquaintance excused himself.

“Now, I know you’re aware of the accidental death rate in this country. Not a pleasant thing to think about, but people die unexpectedly. You could be walking out on a jobsite and get run over by a bulldozer. It happens.”

Was he threatening me? I didn’t really think so. Apparently, some guy had been run over by a bulldozer just last year.

“What we’re really concerned with here are your heirs. With your financial savvy and good business skills, this housing development is sure to be a success. But without you at the helm, your heirs could be bankrupt in days. That’s what we want to protect against. Hardship for your family.”

If something like that happened to me, bankruptcy would be the least of my family’s problems. In the infinity room, there were nearly a thousand people in my household. Over three million in the world I’d created there. My demise would create a problem that a life insurance policy would not alleviate.

I wondered if I should be looking for a partner who could take over for me if something should happen. It seemed that ‘accidents’ like Doug described were all too common in America. And the war had taken a heavy toll on the younger generation. But I had no other demons in my rolodex that I could call on for help.

I really needed to get out of here and take my satchel someplace safe. I just hadn’t found anyplace yet.

I ended up buying an insurance policy. The guy was a good salesman.

I’d often thought I’d found the perfect place to hide my package and retire. Australia was one such place, but everything there tried to kill me. South America was another. The abandoned city of Machu Picchu was our home for many years, but we couldn’t trust it to stay concealed.

And then there was Mongolia. Talk about an isolated and faraway place. No one in his right mind would ever choose to go there.

I started across China, or the Khitan Empire as it was called at the time, near the turn of what we now refer to as the second millennium. For me, it was the beginning of my fourth millennium on earth. I might have continued right across on my westward journey were it not for Fa Zhi.