Feeling completely lost and bewildered, Long-Nü asked the stranger: “What is my final destination?” “You will know once you get there,” he answered, “Now run!” And so she ran. Straight into the tree… And then… she was someplace else!

The first thing she noticed was the complete absence of sound. Less than a second ago Long-Nü was talking to a stranger in the park, and now she was standing on a narrow stairwell overlooking immense, badly-lit hangar bay. It was an old abandoned factory with tall cathedral ceilings and dirty dark windows, and it looked completely empty.

A rogue thought crossed her mind: “Strange? – Barely…”

As soon as Long-Nü gathered her senses she turned left. “Take the first door, then the second, and then the third. Turn left; take the first door, then the second, and then the third.”

…Again and again and again… The words were burning in her head and it was all she could think of in this strange dance of doors, left turns and stairwells.

Somebody grabbed her by her hand at one of the doors, but she did not stop.

As she went through this maddening flight, Long-Nü encountered baffling things. At one of the doors, she spotted a circle of candles, their flames flickering violently in still air. At another, she heard deep dreary singing that made her soul cringe. “Where is the singer and why all this pain?”

Ten left turns and multiple doors later, she found herself at the entrance of a tight stuffy room. At last she was not alone: seven men were quietly chatting at a round table that took up most of the space. She approached the entrance, eager to hear the conversation.

What she heard next shook her to the core. These men, dressed in suit pants and undershirts, were discussing their daily deeds. Their daily deeds, as it turns out, were mostly about controlling our world. These seven men were in charge of Wall Street and Main Street, in charge of presidents, countries, and armies. They led every deal and secret discussion that goes on behind every closed door. They were in charge of crafting religions, suggesting philosophies, and initiating ideas that mankind took as their own.

It was so simple, so elegant, and so ironic. These men in suit pants and undershirts, sitting around a table in a tight room of an abandoned factory, controlled our world and that knowledge was now revealed to Long-Nü.

To be continued…