Commander Zhang & Lieutenant Simon are two easygoing Sirian galactic officers and soul mates assigned to the Mothership Athena. After hearing Gaia’s (planet Earth) clarion call for help ascending, the duo decide to incarnate on earth to help. They come in as handsome and popular actor/male models and singers with a growing global fan base. The mission is to reveal the insidious corruption deep within China’s booming Performing Arts industry. After their meteoric rise to fame on the heels of the success of their Netflix drama series Word of Honor, Zhang becomes embroiled in a devastating career-ending scandal and has to navigate his new position as Public Enemy #1. So what will happen when one soul mate incarnates awake but the other is still asleep?
“What the hell?”
The second he heard his front door lock disengaging Zhang jerked awake and blindly lunged for the door. He had no time to grab the bat he’d placed at the foot of the couch for protection in case of such a break in. By the time he made it to the door it was already swinging open.
Since being blacklisted 8 months before by the government, he’d been on edge, hiding behind closed doors like a criminal. He’d been threatened with death, suffered three attempted break-ins, his acting and singing career that he’d worked tirelessly to build over the last 10 years had tanked, and his name pretty much toast. He was also still being hounded by so-called truth seekers and the negative press. Never mind the internet crazies and nutjobs smearing him every chance they could get.
He used his foot to try to stop the door from opening further but was instead sent flying to the floor as the door swung toward him with some force.
“What the-”
“Ow!” A deep male voice protested from the other side.
Zhang scrambled to his feet but Simon was already inside, pouting and rubbing at his forehead. “That hurt—”
When their eyes met Simon stilled his hand, concerned. “Oh shit! Are you ok? I didn’t think you were home-” He dropped rather casually looking like he had just come home from the gym. He wore a simple light bluish green teeshirt, a beige baseball cap to hide his tousled locks, white Adidas basketball shorts and gleaming white sneakers, his small black shoulder bag slung across his back. In his right hand he had a bag full of groceries.
“You bastard! What the hell are you doing here!” Zhang yelled. Simon was the last person he thought he’d see. After 8 months, he had the gall to show up unannounced, breaking into his apartment, never mind he had the nerve to use the key he’d given him when they’d still been dating. He cursed himself for forgetting to demand it back.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you!” Simon said, a conflicted look on his face. But Zhang felt nothing but fury pulsing through his veins as they finally stood face to face. On the one hand he was glad it wasn’t a stranger breaking in. But he had written the guy off after being dumped without a single word from him only weeks after his troubles began.
“Get out or I’m calling the police!” Zhang yelled pointing at the door.
Simon quickly set down the grocery bag and put both hands up and pouted. “Please! Just hear me out, babe. We need to talk.”
“Don’t ‘babe’ me! Get out!” When Simon made no effort to leave, Zhang went to the door and held it open, his breath starting to come in angry pants, his entire body pulsing with anger. It had taken him months to forget this asshole and the hole his sudden disappearance had left in his heart. He’d be damned if he was going to fall for that pout of his again.
“Don’t make me beg because you know I’ll do it!” Simon said immediately dropping to his knees to prostrate before him. Now that they were finally face to face he wasn’t leaving until he got what he wanted. “We need to talk!”
Zhang couldn’t afford to make a scene and attract attention from the neighbors. Yet the last thing he wanted was to spend a single second arguing with the guy.
Simon blinked up at him without moving from his spot. The stubborn fuck. Zhang only reluctantly shut the door before he turned and glared down at him.
“You know you’ve got some nerve coming here!” Zhang huffed then moved past him to peer out the window to check if he’d been followed. Simon’s shiny black SUV was parked across the street more than a foot off the curb on account of his crappy driving. “Did anybody see you?”
“No. Well maybe just the woman I followed in. I think she got off on the 2nd floor. And the mailman. I said hello as I passed him. Aside from that…” Simon said crawling to his feet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were home as you didn’t answer the buzzer.”
“So you just barge in here?” Zhang fumed.
“I used the key. I would’ve knocked first if I knew you were here,” Simon explained nonchalantly.
“What the f—k is wrong with you? Where the hell were you when I needed you? Do you know the hell I’ve been through- -”.
“You stopped taking my calls- -I was worried and -”
“What?! You were the one who stopped taking my calls and ignored my texts the minute all of this shit went down. Not the other way around!”
One thing Simon had was thick skin. He cut to the chase. “It was only because I was sticking to the plan and running around trying to get everything in place like we talked about.”
“What running around? You mean chasing gigs while I was being roasted alive by the media and the internet crazies and threatened by people I don’t even know? You’ve got the gall to even show up here after all this time,” Zhang raged clenching and unclenching his fists.
It was bad enough he ignored his calls when he needed him but he’d also since learned from his attorneys that Simon might have something to do with setting him up in the first place not to mention the scandal dragging on for as long as it had. He’d always been a whiz at the SM stuff and buying links to drive traffic and boost his popularity. Zhang had no clue how any of it worked. But he knew the guy was driven. What he never suspected was that he would screw him over just to get ahead.
Whatever he was doing seemed to work. His popularity only skyrocketed while Zhang’s crashed and burned overnight. His career was mud. To add insult to injury a billboard with Simon’s latest endorsement for Boss fashions was practically outside his 12th story window. Everytime he walked to the corner store for toilet paper Simon stared down at him with that intolerably handsome mug of his. It was both infuriating and humiliating and he couldn’t count the number of times he’d wanted to throw a raw egg at it.
Watching tv was even worse. Every few minutes an ad he had done peddling MoJosh shades, Elle fashions, Clorox soap, wipes, make up, skin cream and the like popped up. He stopped watching tv because of it.
Zhang couldn’t remember the last time he walked around so casually outside. It got to the point where his safety was an issue. He’d since grown wary of going out and being recognized. Since when did his life become like this? Since he met this asshole who had just broken in.
“Give me back my key!” He demanded holding out his hand. Simon reached into his pocket as if he were about to oblige him then stopped.
“They warned me you were going way too deep and cleared me to just go in,” Simon said in earnest. Despite the painful rumors, what the so-called “netizens” (who were a damn scary lot even to him) had said about either of them, none of it was true. The fact that things had gotten so out of control and the whole scandal took on a life of its own had been alarming. But Simon knew not to get too distracted and just stick to the plan they’d meticulously charted. But when Zhang cut him off completely based on rumors, ignoring his calls and texts, things went sideways quickly. Rally Point 2 went down the drain.
Then things went from bad to worse and just the month before, videos of Zhang bashing him and their joint fans from their hit drama series began surfacing. His studio contacts claimed they were deep fake AI. If they were, they were good. He had to see him for himself but Zhang had ignored him every time he reached out. That’s when he realized they needed help.
He’d also heard from his own sources that forces were at work to drag him into the quagmire as well. People and fans both for and against them only muddied the waters further with all their speculation. And with only one of them awake it would’ve really set them back. He tried reaching him in his dreams, having him relive their most treasured times on the set, during the concerts, during that Happy Camp variety show. That incredible night in Shanghai. But it was hard to know if he was getting through to him as still Zhang never reached back out to him.
He’d already been told by a team leader that unless he and Zhang could salvage the situation, another team would be sent in. With so much at stake with the larger operation, there was little room for negotiation at this point. Refusing to give up on them and call it a wash, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
He cleared his booking calendar for the month and set all his SM accounts to auto post every few days, then drove the almost nine hours from Shanghai to Xinyu City in Jiangxi before stopping for groceries praying the whole way Zhang wouldn’t lose his shit when he saw him. He decided to drive rather than fly to avoid the airport and the hassle of renting a car when he wanted to keep his head clear and maintain a low profile.
When Zhang didn’t answer the buzzer downstairs, he waited for someone else to enter the building and walked in behind them like he belonged there, rode the elevator to the 12th floor and used his key to enter.
“You have to know I never, ever abandoned you, babe.” Not my soulmate. Never. I missed you, missed you every day.
From the looks of things, Zhang was about to pop his gourd.
What the hell god damn nonsense was Gong Jun spouting now? Zhang took a step toward him, fists clenched calculating that if he clocked the scumbag hard enough, catching him off guard, he just might have a chance to knock him out in one punch.
“I only did what I was told. What we agreed on-”
“What are you talking about?? Who told you?” Zhang demanded.
“You did,” Simon responded calmly gauging his reaction.
“WHAT!??? When the hell did I ever tell you to drop me like I meant nothing to you but garbage?! Even after I let you- - aghhhhh!!!” Zhang seethed, about to tear his own hair out.
“Before we jumped…we agreed on everything. About how we would identify and then take down CAPA and the government — the ones behind all the corruption and greed. We said we’d reveal who was behind all the blacklisting that’s been going on all these years and we’d do it as soul mates. Once you got in deep enough, we could call in backup if needed but then you got a little sideways and I decided to request assistance earlier just in case you screwed everything up and dragged me down too. The internet crazies tried that with me last year but—”
What bullshit was he spewing now? One thing was obvious, Simon knew how to cover his own ass and put everything all on him. Everytime they had -
He froze.
In that split second for some inexplicable reason his heart squeezed hard then hammered causing him to gasp despite himself; the thousands of words of rage and angst he’d been about to launch at him left in an instant. Instead Zhang took pause.
“Before we what?”
Simon was looking at him intently as was his habit, not only because he thought Zhang was the most delicately beautiful man that he had ever seen in his book, but because he was peering into his soul, willing his partner to wake up.
To his relief, Zhang seemed to pause, that handsome face mired in shock, that head of beautiful, freshly-dyed dark “auburn” hair now cocked to the side. Simon was about to take a step forward, hopeful that his “wife”, as their fans had labeled Zhang, had come to his senses so they could finally get down to real business. But something told him to be patient. After all it was normal to forget when coming to this sector of the galaxy, and more importantly to Earth.
They’d been briefed on all this forgetting business countless times, executing and practicing numerous scenarios as a fail safe prior to incarnating. They’d trained and discussed the possibilities they’d likely encounter and only then did they feel prepared enough to begin the mission here.
Hell they even laughed about how easy the mission was going to be compared to every other crazy thing they’d done together, scoffing at the other candidates who looked more like frightened bunnies than seasoned masters. Besides, nobody who came to earth (what the SL-52 humans called their planet) for Mission Everlight (the mission) in the last 30 years or so was anything less than a Master in their own right. To say nothing in the last 10 years. At least that was what they’d been told. From what he’d experienced, though, Simon was still on the fence. Whoever told him that had never met some of the so called “netizens”.
Simon and Zhang’s part of the mission was to get in deep enough with the influential organizations and individuals that preyed on those in the performing arts industry and expose their deep-seated corruption and ulterior motives. This included the government-linked China Association of Performing Arts (CAPA) and agency bigwigs, some of whom were also sexual predators, financially vested in the multi-trillion yuan industry which they skimmed to line their own pockets.
Zhang’s role was as a popular actor, singer, and model who gets blacklisted by CAPA and railroaded, tanking his career. Simon’s role was to provide him assistance while also uncovering some of the other players in the industry.
They recognized the scandal Zhang would be embroiled in was actually part of a larger effort to keep the masses distracted and postpone the mass awakening of earth humans on Gaia. As long as the humans were stuck in the lower vibrations of fear, sadness, uncertainty and despair, including their millions of fans, Gaia’s ascension to the 5D could continue to be delayed.
The beings behind this dastardly plan originate off world and in interdimemsional space. They feed off the lower vibrational emotional energies generated by Terra humans such as fear, grief and despair resulting in constant warfare, bloodshed, feelings of powerlessness and other atrocities. Worse, they cause humans to turn on each other. They use a number of tricks for this, including what earth humans call black magic or alchemy to influence humanity and it’s world leaders into keeping the frequency here low. Earth was therefore a battleground between the Light and its counterpart, contrast.
Thus, Zhang and Simon had to come in as performing artists to reveal all this and set in motion events that would lead to the final takedown of these characters. They’d carefully chosen their earth forms together to play the part with precision. They’d agreed on their physical features, the clues they’d put in place to recognize one another, including several matching moles, their uncanny ability to mirror each other’s actions much like twins, and a general sense of soul knowing.
Once they’d met, Simon had instantly recognized his soul mate. In Zhang’s case he also saw they had a special connection but it was more along the lines of ‘friends with benefits’ or in a romantic sense. But in truth, they were two souls that had traveled the galaxy countless times together and connected in different spaces and places over many different lifetimes. But as Simon found out recognizing they were soul mates was one thing. Waking up to why one agreed to be born on earth was completely another. And Zhang hadn’t woken up.
Most humans never did, never remembering their true earth mission, the real reason they agreed to incarnate much less find their soul mate. As a result there were so many unhappy people on earth, and Gaia needed help to ascend.
“Before we got here…” then, “You agree to assume and play a role at the soul level for the purpose of transmuting contrast back to light. To reveal and transform together with your soul mate the deep illness that exists in the minds and hearts of many in the country in which you will be born and around the world, for the purpose of aiding Gaia and by extension those who are mired in darkness and suffering to ascend.” Simon recited from the soul agreements they signed hoping to jog his memory.
As Zhang gathered his wits about him Simon stood there silently, every now and then sneaking a look at his partner’s inky dark eyes to see if he had finally come around. They’d both been well prepared to come in to help Earth and the earth humans finally get out of the long years of fear-induced darkness, overturn all the millennia old corrupted systems and help raise up the overall resonance of the planet. Afterall, Simon at his highest incarnation was an angelic being and Zhang, an Ascended Master.
What they hadn’t anticipated was that the forgetting process would be so thorough. There was no guarantee both partners would wake up. Those who had come before who had woken up had to go through the forgetting process all over again in the next incarnation. And once incarnated if one got too overwhelmed with the drama of their human lives and never woke up, they often entangled themselves in karma ensuring they had to reincarnate again and again to deal with it.
Watching Zhang getting roped in like so many others had been excruciating until he decided enough was enough.
Meanwhile, Zhang stared at Simon in shock and slowly began to remember a little bit.