Stephen Beam - Balaam, the Gray Prophet

One of the harlots came over to Balaam and touched his chest with a bare breast. She wrapped her right arm around his shoulder and put her left hand on his thigh, an attempt to ply him for drinks. Mickey saw this and it angered him. He had to get rid of her. “This is a private party babe. Hit up someone else.”

“Maybe mystery man doesn’t want me to leave,” she said.

Balaam didn’t make any move to push her away. Instead, he raised the shot of whiskey to his lips, sniffed its aroma, then gave it a casual sip rather than downing it all at once. He asked Mickey, “What does Balak want of me? You haven’t yet said.”

“You already know,” Mickey said nervously, upset by the harlot’s intrusion. “Somehow you already know more than you should.” To be effective, Mickey needed to keep cool. The vibe that now surrounded them wasn’t going in his favor.

“The Lord speaks to me,” Balaam said, and finished his glass. He pushed it towards Mickey for a refill. The harlot kept rubbing Balaam’s thigh, but he continued to ignore her.

“I believe you,” Mickey said, and refilled Balaam’s glass while giving the whore his most stern look. It did no good. She didn’t have the social grace to leave where she wasn’t wanted. Mickey shook his head in disgust, reached inside his pocket, grabbed the gold coins offered by both Moab and Midian as down payment on Balaam’s diviner fee. He laid them on the counter and said, “You’re a legend when it comes to the mojo of blessing and cursing. We need your help. ”

“What exactly do you want of me?” Balaam asked, continuing to ignore the harlot’s annoying advances.

“The Sons of Israel lay waste to any domain their god tells them to, slaughtering anyone and anything standing in their way, be it man, woman, child, animal or plant. Balak knows he can’t stand against this gang. He’s scared, and he needs your help. Come with me to Moab and lay a curse on the Sons of Israel. Make them weak and helpless.” Mickey pushed the coins a little closer to Balaam and added, “These gold coins are a mere pittance — a gesture of good faith. The real money’s waiting in Moab when you finish the job.”

The harlot moved from Balaam’s side to reach for the coins on the counter. Mickey grabbed her wrist, twisted it nearly to the breaking point, then shoved her away. She stumbled and nearly fell but managed to remain upright. She rubbed her wrist and said, “Alright. No need to get rough.” She walked off, fading into the smoky darkness.

Balaam swept the gold coins towards himself, counted them, then put them inside his hoodie’s large front pouch. In a softly cryptic tone, he said, “You have others with you. They sit at a nearby table… watching. I want all of you to stay the night in Pethor. Tonight, the Lord will visit me in a dream. In the morning, I’ll reveal to you what He said. But this one thing you must understand: I can’t say other than what the Lord says.”

Where Mickey had originally laid the coins on the counter, it now transformed from rough granite into glossy marble. The nanobot maintenance crew was acting on damaged code, re-molecularizing the countertop. The bartender walked over to this zone of morphing and whacked it hard with the palm of his hand. The struck surface rippled concentrically outward like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. A few seconds later it solidified, returning to its original rough granite finish.

Mickey and Balaam watched the bartender with concern. Nanobots can quickly become dangerous and difficult to remove after they malfunction. Even an EMF blaster might fail to stop them once they go rogue — especially the cheap ones. They tend to lack proper human safety code.

“Shit!” The bartender shouted out in pain. He quickly pulled his hand away from the counter. His fingers rapidly grew twice their normal length and thickness, like overinflated balloons ready to burst. He shook his hand violently, a vain attempt to rid himself of the microscopic machines.

“I’ll call emergency,” Mickey said, and woke his cell phone and tapped the screen. The phone intelligently assessed their situation and location and beamed a message for help. A few minutes later the front door burst open, flooding the bar with light. The emergency team, three men wearing shiny white jumpsuits and transparent bubble helmets, entered the bar. They carried EMF blaster guns that automatically sensed and marked targets. The team cautiously approached the bartender and signaled to those nearby to step away. Mickey and Balaam left their barstools and walked towards the exit.

The emergency team fired their blasters. Powerful electromagnetic radiation poured over the countertop where the morphing had occurred. The bartender, grimacing in pain, yelled out, “All these ‘bots are bad. Go ahead. Wipe everything.” Then he turned to the customers and said, “Everybody leave. We’ll reopen tomorrow.” He knew the bar should have been sterilized at the first sign of renegade nanobots, but even cheap nanobots weren’t cheap. No nanobot came with a warranty, even the expensive ones. A new batch would have cost a fortune.

“Hold out your hand,” one of the emergency team members commanded the bartender. Wincing in pain, the bartender held out his infected hand. The emergency team member made an adjustment to his EMF blaster, took aim at the nanobot malformed hand, and pulled the trigger. The healing nanobots were released after the sterilization process, and three minutes later the bartender’s hand was restored to normal.

Balaam and Mickey now stood outside in the shade of the bar’s front porch. Mickey’s partners from Moab and Midian joined them outside. The other bar patrons went home. Since there were no other bars in Pethor, today’s social imbibing of bottled bliss had ended.

Mickey said to his fellow emissaries, “Let’s find a motel. We’ll wait and hear what Balaam has to say when we meet here in the morning.”

Balaam nodded approval beneath his hoodie. Mickey and his crew took off down the street to check out cheap motels.

Balaam untied Eeayore from the fire hydrant, gave her a pat on the back, then mounted her. A donkey wasn’t the normal mode of transportation here in Pethor, but it made sense for him. She’d been a gift from a cousin on his father’s side. What was meant as a joke turned into a blessing. The lot next to Balaam’s house was a grass covered field where Eeayore grazed to her heart’s content. Free fuel forever.

Dusk turned Balaam’s small white home a deep orange. He dismounted Eeayore and took her to graze in the field next door before he went inside. She appeared to gaze at Balaam warmly, but he refused in anthropomorphizing his pet donkey. The light in her eyes merely reflected his own — a mental projection — much like looking in a mirror. Eeayore was but a warm blooded beast, intelligent, but without true self awareness.

His house was small, the inside laid out studio style. It was perfect for a lone man like himself. One main room and a bathroom, that’s all he really needed. He cooked meals on an old hotplate atop his dresser. His single bed was small, yet it took up nearly a third of the floorspace. On the side opposite his bed was an old couch. This was where he relaxed, ate, and read while resting his feet atop an old wooden coffee table.

There were no maintenance nanobots in his house. Things were left to deteriorate at their own natural pace. Maintenance nanobots were subject to decay just as all things material were. As a mortal made of dust, he felt entropy settling into his bones. He was decaying along with the earth. His old flesh complained from morning to night. Relief came only when YHWH broke through the inertia of matter and touched his mind. The result was a flood of light across his mental landscape. YHWH brought him the big dream, the dream of an eternally holy universe where decay didn’t exist.