🚀 go-pugleaf

`Do you think he has the acumen?`
`I do`
 
Dan Gam was barely surviving. State help would be cut next month and
his meager wage as a salesman was barely adequate to cover hotel and
food, not even transport. Then he went on TV.
 
Not that he wanted it, it was not even in his own country, but he knew
he had been on TV. All his acquaintances were appalled, not believing
it. And he could hear them. Whether it was telepathy, Big Brother or
paid agitators, he knew something was wrong. Weird, how in the
computer appeared his computer`s name and old address...
 
People around Dan started commenting his life. They knew too. But for
each A there was a Z. Then one night he heard it. Nerets.
 
What was Nerets? He didn`t know, but it was important. At first he
wasn`t aware but somehow it related to some repeated phrases that
would pop out everywhere. Wherever he was there was a raucus (from job
to hotel, where else?), confusing everything, though clearly he needed
to know about Nerets. He had to be there, or with them...

Little by little a smudged picture emerged: Nerets had to do with
immortality, gods, stars and... the future. He would maintain a log
with his impressions and the words and phrases he was picking up. Too
fantastic it seemed and yet... a life of skepticism was being cracked
by the undeniable corroborations he was getting. But he had enemies
and his enemies were after him and sent people after him, confusing
him, threatening. Dan had friends and his friends wanted to conduct
him to Nerets, to save him from his enemies, but he didn`t know them,
either the friends or the foes, only the rumors that were reaching him
from everywhere at the same time. Somehow he was being prosecuted and
a battle was being fought to define his future.

The problem was that his enemies, once very mundane, where using him
to reach the secret of Nerets, one by one, while he was lost trying to
understand. A group was being formed and his foes, all criminals, were
desperate to keep him outside. They were going to the future, they
were going to get all dreams realized, but somehow he had the key to
it and part of that key was his computer log. By writing to it the
future would change, the future was in the making and Dan would
alternatively win and defeat his enemies according to the information
he was supplying and the deductions he was arriving at.

Unfortunately he couldn`t distinguish friends from foes. One mistake
would ruin his life, another one would give him victory. Many strange
encounters came and go, unable to decide whether to join or not,
whether it was help or a trap. But his enemies knew well and one by
one reached the secret and the rewards.

The Nerets were time travelers and his Nemesis had arrived first. He
went and came, though it was in his hand whether to grant immortality
or not, wisdom or savagery. The only fact at the moment is that his
great foe did go, and having the key to time was fighting him behind
and beyond. Some battles Dan won, others he lost, lots of people were
involved, myths and legends were created and destroyed, yet one step
at a time the Foe was building his revenge.

Dan Gam decided to keep the secret of immortality from Nerets and let
them fend by themselves. The rest of his foes reached the group, not
without destroying his friends and gurus on the way there, and once
back they would only tell: `You don`t know what he did to you!` Dan
was left alone, the whole world against him.

In the end he kept his secrets, his aces. All his friends were
defeated, destroyed, bribed or otherwise dissapeared from his life.
His foes achieved a victory. The group left and came back, those who
remain, for he was the fulcrum and, without him, Utopia turned into
Hell and evil prevailed...

Rumors, legends, myths, stories, all mixed and copulated and were
known by the whole world, mass confusion veiling the nature of the
battle, while Dan Gam kept fighting to understand what was Nerets and
have truth and goodness prevail. The future was in the making, he
knew, he only needed to convince a few people that he hold the aces,
the keys to the future he negated the Nerets, convinved that the door
to Nerets was somewhere, in somebody`s hands and he would finally be
granted the opportunity to go and confront his enemies, and win.

Dan Gam knew what the Foe had done to him. Still fighting, Dan would
look in the mirror and see that his face had turned, without ever
changing, into the very face of Evil... Lucifer.

ghamac.org/miniface.jpg (part of the story)