It was the only nice part of the day. The sun was just reaching the horizon, the heat had edged slowly away, and the winds had finally died down after their seemingly endless barrage of force into the warm desert. They would diminish the benefit of a nice, cool breeze in the warm climate by blasting large amounts of sand in your face and nearly blinding you.

But they were now gone. It was completely silent. The man standing there on the edge of the small village was, therefore, in complete seclusion, left with nothing but his thoughts.

His thoughts. He had no control over them. He had long since lost his reigns on that which should be his one and only complete domain. He was left focusing his mind on the present, not the fake memories that lay within his brain. The fake memories of wonder and bliss and friendship. A lonely man’s dreams.

“My mind is lost in the cracks of insanity,” he murmured absently to himself, breaking the silence that enveloped the cool sands, “Luckily enough, I managed to grab onto the ledge before falling in myself.”

He sighed as he realized he’d said something deep. But it wasn’t deep. It really wasn’t. He had said exactly what he meant. There was no convolution within. It was nothing. It just was. Perhaps that was why he sighed: he was not able to think up anything more meaningful to say. He had never had that gift. That was the power his old friend Timmy had had, and it had bugged him like hell.

But Timmy was made up. He had never known a Timmy. He had never met anyone named Tames in his entire life. Timmy had never bugged him like hell. He was just remembering a dream. A dream that had been occurring more and more often since these monks had shown up.

He fell to the sandy ground and held his head in his palms. “What’s happening to me?” Jamez Blak asked himself quietly.

Before he had time enough to think any more of these things that were haunting him, a very loud sound erupted from somewhere behind him. At first he assumed it was the helicopter, coming to transport him away. But he had heard helicopters before, and this was no sound a helicopter made. He quickly turned and found a blinding chasm of bright, white light hanging in the air that was not unlike that which occurred when Jamez himself teleported around.

Gradually a silhouetted figure became visible in front of the light, taking long slow steps out of the portal. An image flashed through his mind-it was of an immense door, and a person striding through it into a fortress, silhouetted against the bright white sunlight outside. He had been eating lunch with his friend Jesus.

He shook the image from his dreams out of his head and returned his gaze to the light that continued to spill out of the air before him. It was now changing, though, becoming less-less diameter, less bright. It was going away.

And finally it was gone, leaving no trace of the light or if the silhouetted figure other than the near blindness that Jamez experienced as his eyes readjusted themselves to the dark evening. He frowned at the spot in which the spectacle had taken place for a long moment before he turned back to view the very last moments of the sunset.

Eventually he heard the actual sounds of an approaching helicopter. And then the helicopter had landed and Jamez was getting on, and then they were off, Jamez in the back and a man dressed in all black piloting the thing.

Jamez tried making casual conversation with the pilot but failed each time, as the pilot refused to speak to him.

“Alright,” he finally exclaimed, “Either you’re a robotic assassin sent by the monks, or your a very discourteous TOR agent.”

“It’s the former,” the man said in a metally voice in a rather cheery tone.

“Oh,” Jamez said simply.