QBLH
The Eight of Pentacles
You have put a lot of effort,
devotion, and attention
into your connection
​
Chapter LXXII
Project Theseus
Prudence
​
Jim delayed his return to matter.
In ghost mode, distance and sequence were irrelevant, and so he allowed himself one final circuit of reflection before committing to Colchis. Egypt lay behind him in time, already fracturing beneath the weight of its own absolutism. Ramesses would soon discover that conquest without legitimacy was an empty exercise. His armies would clash with the Hittites at Kadesh, and though both sides would claim victory, the truth would be otherwise: empire had reached its limit. The Amazons, aligned by custom and necessity with the Hittites, had already slipped beyond Egypt’s grasp. Colchis now stood where Egypt once had—prosperous, ritual-bound, and convinced that power flowed downward from divinity rather than upward from consent.
Jim recognized the pattern with growing clarity. Tyranny did not fail because it was cruel; it failed because it was brittle. The older goddess systems collapsed under their own weight, just as the new male theocracies would in time do the same. Moses had not shattered Egypt by force, nor by myth, but by withdrawing consent—by removing the people from the machinery of domination altogether. That distinction mattered. Jim had no intention of undermining the integrity of Moses’ covenant, nor of replacing one revealed law with another fabricated divinity. What he intended instead was more dangerous, and more subtle: to introduce the idea that legitimacy could arise without gods at all. Democracy, unlike kingship, could not be stolen, impersonated, or enforced by fire from the sky. It required patience, failure, and human accountability—qualities Isis despised, and which history itself resisted.
Only after this reckoning did Jim allow himself to descend again toward Colchis, knowing that once he chose a body, choice itself would narrow. Ghost mode had granted him perspective. Flesh would demand action.
While operating in ghost-mode, Jim did not experience time sequentially from any
ordinary point of view. He warped repeatedly—forward, backward, laterally—observing events out of order, collecting fragments of understanding rather than a single continuous narrative. When he had learned enough, it was time to return to his body. He rematerialized quietly in a narrow backstreet of Colchis, unnoticed.
Before the return was complete, however, an unmistakable correction was imposed upon him.
He was no longer to act as an emissary of Isis.
His mission—to dismantle the machinery of goddess worship—had been formally elevated.
“Well,” Jim said dryly, once his bearings returned, “that pretty much determines how we’ll have to approach the Israeli–Palestinian problem, Idiot.”
“Pardon, Jim?” the unit replied. “I am not certain I understand.”
“Have we not just verified certain biblical facts?”
“I am afraid I do not follow.”
Jim frowned. “What’s wrong with your memory banks? Don’t you have any record of my displacement to Egypt while in ghost-mode?”
“I was unable to complete the transfer,” Idiot replied. “There appears to have been a fault condition. You lost consciousness immediately after the attempted execution. What is odd, Jim, is that events appear exactly as they would have if the transfer had succeeded. It is as though intervention was unnecessary. This is… anomalous. Do I require recalibration?”
Jim understood at once.
Idiot had not been permitted access to what he had just witnessed.
He had not dreamed those visions. Rather, Yaohushua had demonstrated—quietly, unmistakably—that He possessed a merkabah far beyond Jim’s own. Genie, for all its brilliance, was little more than a toy by comparison. The implication was clear: Jim was to return to the future and act with restraint. Anti-Israeli sentiment was to be neutralized, not inflamed. Jew and Muslim alike would be required to live as neighbors—or suffer consequences not delivered by human hands.
If either clung stubbornly to false prophets or rejected truth outright, suffering would continue. Shattering the beliefs of billions would itself resemble an apocalypse. To Jim, belief—present or future—was the great deceiver. Truth was rarely obvious. Correction, therefore, demanded patience, not domination. Power imposed without love merely bred tyranny.
It appeared his role was not that of ruler, but of watchman.
He would complete his sojourn with Helen and Antiope, return to Artemis and Earth, and then see what good he could accomplish.
The absurdity of it struck him: worrying about events three and a half millennia away as though they were imminent. Yet that was precisely his condition. He knew now that he ruled two kingdoms. The Pharaohs had modeled themselves on the very style of governance Isis wished Jim to adopt. Yet the idea of ruling Earth as Pharaoh repelled him.
Instead, a counterstroke suggested itself—almost playful.
He would seed democracy.
Not rule by decree, but by consent. Let humanity attempt self-governance, imperfect as it would be. He would also allow himself a few carefully chosen detours through history—Israel, certainly, given his obligations in the twenty-first century. Perhaps even the era of Mohammed, to better understand the fracture points. He no longer doubted he would be permitted to witness such moments. He had already stood unseen at the Nativity and the Burning Bush.
Ghost-mode had proven sufficient.
What he could no longer underestimate was the reach of his Dimensional Controller—or the will behind Yaohushua’s power. Was it Jim’s own desire, or divine prompting, that drew him toward these moments? Could he have been present in recorded history under another name? The possibility refused to leave him. It would shape his course from here forward.
The riddle—how to break cycles of tyranny and inherited violence—now felt solvable. What once seemed impossible to a schoolboy on Artemis had become a matter of technical finesse. Genie spared him endless repetition, multiplying his effectiveness. And yet, for all this, the immediate task remained simple:
Medea and the fleece had to reach Greece.
Medea would choose her own king. Jason, denied intimacy, would abandon her soon enough. She would find another consort easily—one she could elevate. Jim would later arrive as Theseus and restructure governance itself. Antiope would delight in the irony. Helen would burn with anticipation for Troy, Paris, and what followed.
Democracy, Jim suspected, would suit Antiope surprisingly well—particularly in her future dealings with America.
But first, the Argonauts.
Before rejoining them, Jim confronted a logistical paradox: Hercules and Theseus were recorded as separate men. The Argonauts knew Hercules. Yet that role was finished—if it had ever truly existed. Many versions of the legend excluded Theseus from the voyage entirely.
Which solved the problem.
As Hercules, Jim had been aligned with the Amazons and Isis’s order. As Theseus, he would become the force that dismantled Amazon dominance entirely. After Theseus, there would be no Amazons.
He required both identities.
Medea complicated matters further. She recognized Hercules as Qblh—and loved him. Theseus, however, would be invisible to her perception. A change of appearance, with careful timing, would suffice.
Some might later question Jim’s right to interfere with belief systems of the past. Such critics would conveniently ignore that many of those systems were already the result of prior interference. The struggle for dominion over Earth did not belong to any one century. It had spilled backward through time the moment others learned to cross the event horizon.
Jim could not remain Qblh alone. Nor Hercules. Nor Theseus. He was all of them—and none. Isis understood this. It explained her habit of renaming him endlessly. Even “Hey you” might have sufficed, had there been fewer witnesses.
Who would prevail remained uncertain. Isis often seemed irritated by Jim’s apparent victories—as though she knew she would lose, and found that knowledge irrelevant.
From her perspective, even the collapse of goddess worship amounted to little more than a temporary ebb. Seven thousand years of dominion outweighed a brief interruption. Civilization itself bore her imprint.
Jim, however, was campaigning for independence.
And his father approved.
Isis held many cards—but not all. Jim had encountered a Force immeasurably greater than either of them. After meeting Yaohushua, the notion of Isis as a goddess became untenable.
Now he stood between them both.
Temporal disputes among men felt trivial by comparison, yet both powers cared deeply for Earth. The true conflict lay not in outcome, but in governance.
Jim wanted freedom—his own, and that of others. Ironically, his attempts to avoid rule only consolidated his influence.
“Idiot,” he said at last, “how difficult would it be to alter my physical appearance so the Argonauts won’t recognize me?”
“Trivial,” Idiot replied. “A reversible manifold-based reconstruction will suffice.”
“Excellent. Antiope should choose the features.”
“Shall I transport you to her tent?”
“Yes. Initiate.”
To the people of Colchis, Jim appeared only as a ragged beggar muttering to the air. No one understood his language—nor could they have comprehended that he was conversing with a sentient interface far beyond their world. No witnesses marked his dematerialization, rematerialization, or transformation.
Idiot performed flawlessly.
Antiope offered enthusiastic suggestions for Theseus’s appearance, though she never saw the result. The alteration occurred mid-displacement, between her tent and the city streets.
When Jim emerged again, Hercules was gone.
Theseus walked toward the palace.
At the gates, Helen herself stopped him.
“You are not permitted,” she said evenly. “Only Amazons, Argonauts, and select citizens may attend.”
Theseus bowed and withdrew.
The board was narrowing.
The pieces were almost ready.
