Friday, May 30, 2025

JOURNAL ENTRY – PHILIP HARROWFIELD // JULY 12–15, 2097

 


July 12

We left Samarkand just after dawn, the sky over the desert already blistering gold. The aircraft, Vivek's own long-range private jet, was quieter than usual. Three daughters of the dragon accompanied us: Kaimana, calm and competent; Almira, radiant and calculating; and Ruzan, scowling in silence.

Ruzan was not meant to come. But with her web of half-conspiracies exposed, she’d been given a choice: leave Samarkand or never leave a cell. She chose poorly, perhaps, but she chose.

July 13–14
We settled in New Delhi. Not in the chaos of the megacity itself, but a little ways outside, in an old colonial-era hotel. Stone walls, ivy, and silence. The team set about prepping the logistics while Halo did what she does best: isolate, brood, and burn from within until the moment demands brilliance. This concert would be different. We would lean into the cultural weight of punarjanma, the idea that life circles back on itself, that every step forward is one already taken.

Ruzan sulked but behaved. Almira schmoozed the local officials. Kaimana and I shared whisky.

July 15
The stage rose from lotus-shaped platforms, bathed in golden light. Halo appeared not with a shout, but with a whisper. Tonight's theme: memory as reincarnation, soul as pattern.

She pulled four people from the crowd. Three were pre-selected. One, a random pick, plucked like fate itself had spoken. One by one, she reached into them, and into the Matrix-streamed illusion behind her, we followed. Past lives unfolded.

We saw a poet under the Raj, his verses burned in a fire he lit himself. A dancer from the Mughal court, her name forgotten, her movements eternal. A street medic from the Age of Collapse, stitching wounds under broken neon. And finally—

The last one changed the air.

We fell backward. Into the 4th World. Into towers that curved like ivory, into bazaars of fire and silk, into creatures that sang spells instead of words. Magic everywhere. So much magic. For a moment, even I felt it. Like something familiar. Like I’d been there before.

The audience cried. Or meditated. Or just stared.

Another victory.

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