I know in the past couple of chapters I've left some loose ends, and don't worry, we'll tie those up. But I still have four more people to introduce you to. These will be short, don't worry.
.oOo.
Diamond Jane Seth was in a Tarot reading. She sold Tarot readings in her spare time, when she wasn't answering the telephones at the Psychic Friends Hotline of America--the ONLY certified psychic network. (It's best not to ask, Certified by whom?) For her services, she charged about $20 an hour. Consultant's fees.
She long ago had suspected she had some kind of psychic talent. She would be able to get feelings about certain people or situations, and often gave great advice. As she grew older, and she was fascinated by this talent, she learned about psychology. She decided that the Talent was some unconscious method of picking up on cues, instantly assembling an accurate mental picture about someone based on subtle observations like body language and mode of speech. So she had studied kinesthetics and neurolinguistic programming and all of the other modern equivalent to the pseudosciences of the Gypsies. Jane had done the best she could--trying to figure out what her Talent was and taking steps to refine it.
Jane began her study of Tarot some five years ago. She recognized the cards as symbolizing various archetypal events in human life and history, the Wandering Saint, the Sky Father, the Earth Mother. The layouts allowed for random noise displays ripe for projection--like Rorschach. A fine method for psychoanalysis, more than anything else.
At least, that's what she thought until her Third Eye opened.
That's what she called it. The opening of her Third Eye. She had half believed it was bullshit, listening to others in her profession, most of whom were rampant New Agers swearing that they are reincarnates of Egyptian and Mesoptamian royalty or the sacred priesthood of Ancient Agharti and Atlantis or Mu or some other such nonsense. But then it happened to her.
The reading was reaching the part where future predictions are made. She had examined the querent's past and present, and determined a lot of things: He's very smart and very cute, with a warm, magnetic personality, but he has a very low self-esteem. Not recently, a relationship ended, but he holds great feeling for her, a wonderful love, but it is obscured by other feelings of confusion and he isn't sure how to proceed. He's ready to make a major life change right now, so she better give good advice.
"Well," she begins, looking at the cute boy, probably about twenty, blond hair encroaching on being long, like one of the early days of the hippies or a long-haired beatnik or something, "you have two potential paths to follow. One looks very difficult, but is the more attractive to your intellect. The other involves focus on the material plane, and leads to much quicker and smoother changes, but might be somewhat repulsive to your temperment.
"However," and suddenly the thought occurs to her, "this future looks like the one you are likely to follow. Indeed. You are about to make a great move, halfway across the country for reasons which confuse your friends, and probably confuse you as well. You will only know that you have to make this journey." Where is this coming from? How do I know all this? From the look on his face, it's right on. "Getting a job will be difficult, and the first job you think you will land turns out not to hire you. What is important is to focus on getting a life, building a life there with your friends. As this is going on, deep transformative shifts-- that's what this Death card refers too--will move through you. You'll hardly notice them until they are over. Interestingly, this will lead to eventual understanding of how to handle your own emotions--which have given you so much trouble of late--which will lead to a deep happiness.
"A result of this happiness will make you even more attractive, resulting from confidence, and you will seem to glow. Your feelings towards the girl will also be cleared up, and you will come to understand what it truly means to love. After maybe a year, she will have her own problems worked out--yes, the beautiful redhead you are so in love with does have her own problems and no full reconciliation may occur between you until she works those out--and you will meet, expecting only a friendly encounter. The internal beauty released by both of you figuring out your heads will be almost explosive. As soon as you get home after spending a spectacular evening together, more enjoyable evening than any other you've spent with her except for perhaps the two hours you visited her at work the weekend her ex-boyfriend was in town and she was very happy to see you--you will have a full, healthy sexual union which will subsequently result in a full, healthy relationship. Marriage will never be consummated."
Now I'm getting way to far out, but it's so TRUE! Jane thinks. "Finally you will enter a polyamorous relationship with another couple you both adore, after they work their problems out, and the four of you will live happily until you are called back to the Infinite Void. Um, I think I have to go now."
This is really spooking Jane out, you see. She jumps up and leaves the room, before she tells him more of his darkest fears, before she tells him moments of his past he cared not to remember, and she runs down the street, surrounding her are more people, and she can see straight into their hearts, their souls, she their entire fortunes unfold before them, their entire pasts raveling into the tapestry of their presents.
She finally makes it to her apartment, sobbing. Takes some melatonin and lays down for the hour until sleep mercifully curls its fingers around the hum of everyone's feelings and thoughts, the weight of a world's worth of hopes and fears forming a background static against which she could not bar her own thought.
.oOo.
Alexander Foley received the Message in ritual. A quiet ritual, not intending to do any major work. Simply praying, laying down, prostrating himself before the Infinite Void. Waiting for potential instruction.
Tonight, he received it. A steady stream of information, of technique. This time it wasn't a telepathic contact from one of his Superiors. This time it was coming directly from the Source.
After it was over, he realized two things--he only had fragments of it, and would have to seek out and assemble the other fragments. Indeed, his fragments were even more limited than what those whom he must find possessed, but he would be the only one fully capable of coordinating them.
Second. This is It. The message that came in the mail, the one he burned after reading, addressed from the Bavarian Illuminati, a joke group spinning off from the Discordians in the late fifties, which read: OUR SENSITIVES REPORT THE FIRST STAGE IS IMMANENT. TRANSMISSION MAY BEGIN WITHIN NEXT FEW DAYS.
It is, of course, just a joke, a Jake, being pulled on the man who had received some noteriety in occult circles over the past few years.
Just a joke.
.oOo.
Billy Dee Roberts, the preacher, got to meet Christ, finally.
Billy believed he had met Christ before, when, two decades ago, at the pit of drug addiction, he dragged himself into a Church, needing something to believe in, and found Jesus. Since then his life had changed, and he had risen to become an important pastor in Alabama. He even had a television show on the cable access channels. But never before had Jesus revealed so much.
He was praying, you see. He prays in his dressing room before going out and preaching on Billy Dee Live. In the midst of the prayer, a great light opened in the heavens, and a voice speaketh down, saying, "Billy Dee, I have something to show you."
And he trembled in the face of the LORD, and beseeched him, saying, "LORD, I am unworthy to be your servent. I am sinful and weak."
And the LORD said unto him, "Verily, you are a man, full of sin. But you have been remade in my Image. I shall lead you upwards into the heaven."
The angelic host came down upon him and took Billy before the kingdom of the LORD in heaven. The sights dazzled his eyes, and he fell down, worshipping, saying, "Truly you are the LORD of LORDS, the King of Kings, truly art thou magnificent!"
And the LORD saith, "Look there."
And Billy looked, and he saw a great Chariot, streaking across the sky, drawn by a four horses, a red horse, a black horse, a pale horse, and a white horse, with a great rider, dressed all in white.
And the LORD saith, "This is the instrument by which my judgement shall come to Earth. In this Chariot I shall take up the faithful. And you are to help lead the faithful into the Rapture of my eternal Light.
"There are others who will aid you, and whom you will aid. You shall know them by my mark upon them. Blessed are they who will meet the LORD on this great day, for many shall face the Tribulation."
And the LORD returned Billy to his body.
Boy, did he have a story to tell his congregation NOW!
.oOo.
The final character is none other than yours truly. What was I doing when these things happened? Well, I'm not ashamed to admit, though I am rather hesitant, that I was inhaling smoke from an illegal drug.
You see, I am a chemist by profession and hobby. A writer by nature, but a writer who has as his second love, the beauty of the molecule. And not just any molecules, but those molecules which somehow manage to act on certain neural receptor sites in the brain that manage to totally transform one's notions and perceptions of reality for the next several hours. The kind of molecules that can potentially cause major shifts in one's mind, revealing insights if one is prepared and seeks them. That provide magnificent experiences of exploration, opportunities to fine-tune the nervous system.
Molecules which are properly called psychedelic.
I realize this may bother some of my readers. So far, any mention of these drugs has been in the past of the cast. But, you see, they are very much in my present, or were at the time of this tale. This is why I was a chemistry major--to study psychedelics. Most of my work was, unfortunately due to political reasons, illicit. But that can be expected, considering the political climate. Fortunately, drugs were also largely tolerated, and I knew that as long as I didn't make a big stink, only synthesizing unusual drugs for a small circle of connesseiurs, then I would be free from unwated scrutiny--both from users and those who could arrest me.
Now, what, you may wonder, was I smoking when It hit me? Well, it's entirely possible you might not have even heard of it, but I bet many of you have. It wasn't marijuana, as some might expect. No, actually, I was on the most powerful and short-acting of the serotonergic psychedelics (psychedelics which affect serotonin, like LSD or mushrooms, unlike marijuana or PCP or ketamine). It goes by the name DMT or N,N-DMT, which stands for N,N-dimethyltryptamine. Little orange crystals that you smoke. The Flash lasts about ten minutes, ten minutes of hyperspace.
DMT is funny stuff. I've already warned you that words won't fit around a lot of the experiences that pop up in this book, and words slip off of DMT more than any other. I could direct you to Terence McKenna, or perhaps to a few of the more obscure writings of Timothy Leary in which he mentioned DMT. Or the Tom Wolfe classic, in which Wolfe manages to blame DMT for shattering the mind of one of the Merry Prankstesr and landing him in a mental institution (to be rescued later, of course).
The DMT experience will tell you more about psychedelics than any other drug experience. It contains all the classic elements of what Rudolf Otto calls "mysterium tremendum" (my involvement in psychedelics prompted me to take a few religions studies courses as well). Thirty seconds after smoking, the user is propelled into an unreal world, or perhaps the Real World. Pattern recognition is totally lost--all of visible reality dissolves into dancing light patterns, pure energy blasted into your eyes. Not only that, it contains vital information. Everything is transmitting an important message, showing you how it fits in the Grand Scheme. A complex circular pattern which is often compared to a chrysanthemum spins around vision, but more than being the most incredible sight anyone will ever see, this vision also explains the world, the Universe. It is a fractal describing how social events, cultural evolution, biology, and the cosmos all have direct meaning to the decisions you make every day.
But wait. Hold on to your hats, because there's a deeper level. Beyond these visuals, about one in three DMT explorers in clinical trials during the nineties reported contact with what they believed were spirits or extraterrestrials. The tykes, the self-transforming elf machines which populate the rants of Terence McKenna. What are these creatures? I'm not even going to hazard a guess. But they're out there, three lungfuls of DMT smoke and a minute away. They chatter, they play, the spin about, the move through you, they educate you.
Well, it was right in the middle of glossalalic discourse with these chattering balls of mercury spilling themselves across my room that the Transmission hit me.
"Well," the elves said to me, though it should be understood they weren't speaking English, nor any other human language, "it's time for you to play your part in our Plan."
And I was blasted.
I won't really tell you what I was blasted with, that will unfold through the tale. But I was blasted with the entire Plan, programmed, given my instructions. The only thing I can really say about that moment is that, it was very weird. Like I'd suddenly done a cannonball into the pond we discussed earlier, you know, the pond that represents space, time, mind and all reality. Like an ocean of images, sounds, thoughts, feelings, had all been downloaded into my head at once, which unfortunately was only the size of a Japanese tea cup. And you know what? It all fit.
When I came down, ten minutes later, right on cue for DMT, I saw a number of shapes dancing in front of my eyes. These shapes, I realized, were atoms, and they joined together to form a molecule. A molecule. I looked at it. There's indole, there's another ethylamine attached to one of the benzene rings, and there were a million other things hanging off of it.
"Piece of paper!" I shouted. The attendant--you have to have an attendant for a good DMT ritual, someone to pull the pipe after you fall into the trance, someone to give you water when you come back--handed me a pen which I could not see, from all the dancing colors and molecules, but I managed to scribble down the structure.
This is important. This means something, I realized.