Illusions by Richard Bach Read Free Book Online Page A

and that he'd be right.
                 He stretched out in the grass, the last of the flour in its bag for a pillow. "Look, you don't worry about the crowds. They can't touch you unless you want them to. You're magic, remember: FOOF!-you're invisible, and walk through the doors."
                   "Crowd got you at Troy , didn't it?"
                 "Did I say I didn't want them to? I allowed that. I liked it. There's a little ham in all of us or we'd never make it as masters."
                 "But didn't you quit? Didn't I read... ?"
                 "The way things were going, I was turning into the One-and-Only Full-Time Messiah, and that job I quit cold. But I can't unlearn what I've spent lifetimes coming to know, can I?"
                   I closed my eyes and crunched a hay stem. "look, Donald, what are you trying to tell me? Why don't you come right out and say what is going on?"
                 It was quiet for a long time, and then he said, "Maybe you ought to tell me. You tell me what I'm trying to say, and I'll correct you if you're wrong. "
                 I thought about that a minute, and decided to surprise him. "OK, I'll tell you." I practiced then pausing, to see how long he could wait if what I said didn't come out too fluent. The sun was high enough now to be warm, and way off in some hidden field a farmer worked a diesel tractor, cultivating corn on Sunday.
                 "OK, I'll tell you. First of all, it was no coincidence when I first saw you landed down in the field at Ferris, right?"
                   He was quiet as the hay growing.
                 "And second of all, you and I have some kind of mystical agreement which apparently I have forgotten and you haven't."
                 Only a soft wind blowing, and the distant tractor-sound wafting back and forth with it.
                 There was part of me listening that didn't think what I said was fiction. I was making up a true story.
                 "I'm going to say that we met three or four thousand years ago, give or take a day. We like the same kind of adventures, we probably hate the same sort of destroyers, learn with about as much fun, about as fast as each other. You've got a better memory. Our meeting again is what you mean by 'Like attracts like,' that you said."
                 I picked a new hay-stem. "How am I doing ?"
                 "For a while I thought it was going to be a long haul," he said. "It is going to be a long haul, but I think there's a slim out side chance that you might make it this time. Keep talking."
                 "For another thing, I don't have to keep talking, because you already know what things people know. But if I didn't say these things, you wouldn't know what I think that I know, and without that I can't learn any of the things I want to learn." I put down my hay-stem. "What's in it for you, Don? Why do you bother with people like me ? Whenever some body is advanced as you are, he gets all these miracle-powers as byproducts. You don't need me, you don't need anything at all from this world."
                 I turned my head and looked at him. His eyes were closed. "Like gas in the Travel Air?" he said.
                 "Right," I said. "So all there is left in the world is boredom . . . there are no adventures when you know that you can't be troubled by any thing on this earth. Your only problem is that you don't have any problems!"
                 That, I thought, was a terrific piece of talking.
                 "You missed, there," he said. "Tell me why I quit my job... do you know why I quit the Messiah job.?"
                 "Crowds, you said. Everybody wanting you to do their miracles for them."
                 "Yeah. Not the first, the second. Crowdophobia is your cross, not mine. It's not