Return-Path: Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 03:15:29 -0500 (EST) Reply-To: quanta+@andrew.cmu.edu (Quanta Magazine) From: quanta+@andrew.cmu.edu (Quanta Magazine) To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/da1n/Quanta/Dlists/asciimail.dl@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: Quanta - December 1992 - ASCII - Part 3(4) twenty-four archiplasms were out of form now forever, and free. They rode the ancient trak, hurtling for Home. I followed along behind, traveling easy, traveling light, and herding them like a cheerful shepherd. ______________________________________________________________________________ Lou Crago has published mainly poetry, but now has decided SF is probably the most enticing literary form around, and is goint to try to write more of it. Other interests include Hindu astrology, southern cooking, and virtual reality. Crago_L@CUBLDR.COLORADO.EDU ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ WAITING FOR THE NIGHT BOAT "She had sent out calls on her by Nicole Gustas radio until it began to consume power she needed for the heating Copyright(c)1992 unit in her suit." ______________________________________________________________________________ It had been three days since she slipped from the ship. Three days since she lost her grip and slid off into the cold blackness. She knew now she had been overconfident about maneuvering in zero gee. No one had seen her slide off into space; she had been maneuvering outside on the crew's sleep shift, without telling anyone where she was going, so she wouldn't be disturbed in her research. She was alone, with little hope of rescue. She had sent out calls on her radio until it began to consume power she needed for the heating unit in her suit. She wasn't sure if she'd heard a reply - sensory deprivation had been causing intermittent hallucinations after the first eight hours. She didn't realize how bad it was until she found herself back in her playroom from her childhood at home, sitting in front of her dollhouse. She wondered if she'd recover her sanity if a ship picked her up. The hallucinations added stimuli to the emptiness around her. The only view was the endlessly unchanging starfield, and the only sound the rhythm of her breathing. No one had ever been so alone, she thought, as she remembered those hectic days on the ship where she had wished for complete solitude. Now she craved the stress, the constant flow of information. She kept turning because she was sure she heard something dark and misty moaning behind her. It tried to grab her and she pushed it back, then fell into the waves of space washing over her. Cold sweat brought her back to reality momentarily. Shudders went through her. She realized, looking at her gauges, that her oxygen would soon run out. She was about to die alone. She used all the power in her suit for one last radio squirt. Perhaps when they found her they could bury her in a crowded cemetery. She didn't want to be alone forever. The silence screamed at her once again and she turned to face it. Space came back to life around her. She tried to keep it from clawing at her, felt a burning in her chest and realized she was bleeding over the clean white tile. She fell to her knees in her kitchen, felt the man stab her again and became dizzy with the loss of blood. She turned back to the darkness and felt the beast with its tentacles wrapped around her pulling her into its maw. She opened her eyes once more to the stars; they quickly fell shut and the night embraced her. The roaring forced her back to consciousness. She tried to run from it, but was unable to move. She opened her eyes and stared into a bright light which made a halo around the head of the man who stood before her. "You're safe now," said the man. She relaxed as she felt energy enter her once again. Everything was all right. ______________________________________________________________________________ Nicole Gustas is currently taking night classes at SUNY Purchase in an attempt to get her bachelor's degree. She works days as an administrative assistant at JWP (hey, it pays the bills). Her ambition is to someday be wealthy enough to buy all the books she lusts after. ngustas@hamp.hampshire.edu ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ "Chas's trench erupted with GREEN excitement. A small, brown man jabbered away in Spanish faster by John Goodrich that I could follow. Talented as ever, Chas yakked back just Copyright(c)1992 as fast, then climbed into the trench with him." ______________________________________________________________________________ The sun blazed down into the clearing, loosing the steam, making the dig unbearable. I regretted all the chickens I had cooked in pits when I was a boy scout; now I knew how they felt. I was sweating like a pig in humid Peten jungle of Guatemala, unable to breathe, lakes of perspiration spreading across my back and forehead. I wished I had never heard of the Maya, or taken up European archaeology instead. I managed ten native workers, while my fellow student from Peaslee University was managing fifteen. Chas had a heavier workload according to her experience and much greater facility with Spanish. Chas's working knowledge showed in the way she did everything, efficient, confident, brilliant. I, on the other hand, was on my first dig, and three years of university Spanish hadn't prepared me for what these workers spat at me. Too fast and heavily accented, I barely managed communication. I could have asked Chas to translate, but it would have been a sign of weakness, and I really didn't want to increase her stress level, calling her over every time someone wanted to talk to me. I just struggled on, the way I usually did. This dig, for example. Everyone had to do some field work before they got a graduate degree in archaeology. This dismal little hole in the Peten was a recent discovery. About half a dozen students had signed up to go on the dig, but I was chosen because I had great grades in my classes. Of course I didn't know squat about Mesoamerican field archaeology. The Maya were my nominal area of specialty. I never imagined that the place would be so isolated. The most reliable method of getting to this dig was by mule. Here it is, the twentieth century, we've put a man on the moon, and I have to use a mule to get to and from an archaeological dig. There were other things, the heat, the total humidity, the night noises, the malaria, the mosquitoes; nobody really impressed on me how bad it was. So here I was, sweating over my workers who were doing most of the heavy work. In Central America, we hire people to do our digging; it was the traditional way of things. Of course, being bored also seemed to be the traditional way of things. I wandered over to Chas, who was between trench inspections herself. "Who was bored enough to go combing through satellite photos of Guatemala to find this place?" I asked her. Chas laughed her bright, blonde laugh. I hate to say it, but she does laugh like a blonde. Yeah, she's got a master's, and is working on her Ph.D., but she laughs like a stupid blonde. Chas's hair was probably sandy, but a couple of months near the equator had bleached it almost as well as peroxide. She also had the most fascinating eyes - gray with flecks in them, like some sort of cracked rock crystal. Her bronze skin made her light eyes stand out even more. She turned her tanned face with the bright eyes to me and smiled brightly. "Probably some poor CIA schmuck who didn't have Soviets to ogle any more. Your tax dollars at work, Dave. If I remember correctly, they found this when they were searching for Noriega." "A bit far out for Noriega, isn't it?" I can never tell when she's pulling my leg. "No, I'm absolutely serious. Apparently, the guy who found it was a Peaslee graduate, and he gave us first crack at it." I had never though the CIA was good for much, and this news buttressed my position. Chas smiled brightly again. "Gotta go, work to do, you know." I sighed, "Yeah, sure. See you in a few." Bored, bored bored, bored, I thought, watching her go. Chas seemed to be the only bright spot in this dull, tense, sopping wet, overgrown forest. But then, I had left the excitement of being an EMT in New Haven, Connecticut. I had left that when some drug-crazed freak mistook me for a cop. I still had a puckered bullet scar in my shoulder from that encounter. Chas's trench erupted with excitement. A small, brown man jabbered away in Spanish faster that I could follow. Talented as ever, Chas yakked back just as fast, then climbed into the trench with him. I sighed. I'd find out what it was at dinner tonight. If it was really good, I'd see it in a few minutes, but it didn't look like that was going to happen. One of my own workers had found something interesting, however, so I came over to her trench. She handed up a series of brightly-colored pottery fragments, and I turned them over in my fingers. There were a few tantalizing bits of information, and a couple pieces linked up, but the fragments were too small to make anything conclusive. It could be weeks before they found any more pieces of this one. Dimly, I heard Chas's group erupting in conversation again, but I was concentrating on the pieces of pottery, cleaning them off with a toothbrush. The pieces were a polychrome drawing of a headdress, probably a priest's to judge from the complexity and . . . Something touched my shoulder and I jumped. Pedro, one of Chas's workers was standing behind me. "Seenior Dave," he said in better English than most, "I theenk the seniorita needs help" I spun around and looked at Chas's trench. She wasn't there, but her workers were crowding around the lip and waving to me. My EMT training kicked into high gear, and I took charge, sort of. I told the shovel bums to back away from the trench and let me down into it. Chas had fallen in, her limbs splayed like those of a discarded doll. Her heartbeat was strong and regular, and her skin wasn't hot. No heat stroke, no heart attack, probably not malaria . . . . I shouted in Spanish for someone to go find Dr. Fossey. Fossey was out in what were the fields of the settlement, digging up dirt and pollen samples, trying to date the dig. Nobody wanted to go. Fossey didn't have a kind personality. I pitied any dog she had back in the states. I turned back to Chas. Somewhere behind the emergency, I wondered at the jadeite spine she was holding in her right hand. Although stingray spines were kosher ritual gear, I couldn't think of any examples of jade ones. Usually the spines were obsidian or organic sea-ray cartilage. I shoved the thoughts aside and concentrated on what would be best for Chas, since the afternoon rain was due to start in about ten minutes, and I figured it would be good to keep her dry. The tents aren't much cooler than outside, but the principle of shelter made me feel better. Chas didn't react at all. Ten minutes later, Fossey burst into the tent, impatient to know what was going on. Chas was stirring weakly by then. The sun was descending, already clotted by the rainforest outside the little clearing. Unusually, there was no rain this afternoon. There was almost always an afternoon rainfall in the Peten. That's why they called it a rain forest. Of course, it didn't help the humidity, which was higher than the temperature's ninety. At least the rains sometimes brought cooler air with them. I sat at the table, and began to brush the mud and dirt off an obsidian eccentric that had been dug up two days earlier. I concentrated for a few minutes, brushing it with careful strokes of the beaten toothbrush I had bought just before I came to Guatemala. Layers of grunge came off, and it began to look like a banana clip with much of the Mahabarata being performed on top of it. Typical Mayan weirdness I thought. After about fifteen minutes, I was bored. I simply can't take the tedious work of archaeology without something else going on. I walked into my tent and brought out my treasured bag. The walkman had been a birthday present two years ago, and I was on the third set of batteries that month. They were also my last batteries until the supply mule came in another two weeks. I didn't know what I was going to do when this set went dead. I hate living away from civilization. I fumbled with the walkman for a second, then delved into a thick stack of tapes, and came up with the Alarm's Standards. I slid in the tape and pressed play. A few seconds later, my world consisted of dirt, toothbrush, and Mike Peter's voice. Six songs later, I jumped as someone put their hand on my shoulder. I whipped around, dragging the walkman to the soggy dirt in the process. Chas was there, looking down at me. She looked a bit pale, but otherwise all right. Sheepishly, I picked up the tape player and wiped the mud off it. "Dave, I want to talk to you." Her voice was soft, and hot flash rushed down my spine. Damn heat I thought "Sure," I said, "what about?" Chas walked over to my cot, pushed aside the mosquito netting, and sat in the shade. "I had a real weird dream this afternoon. When I tried to pick up the spine, I..." she stopped, "this sounds really silly, but I dreamed I was at the site when it was active. It was pretty weird..." her voice trailed off. She wasn't really talking to me, I realized, she was talking to get this out. She looked at me again. "I usually don't dream. And this one was so very, well, vivid. I don't know, forget I said anything." She got off the cot, and started to leave, but I stopped her. "Tell me about it Chas," I blurted, then hesitated, the words damming in my throat. "I want to hear." Chas looked at her toes for a second, then drew patterns in the soggy dirt with a boot, and sat back down. "It was weird. I felt like I wasn't really there - sort of like a ghost I guess." She was looking at her toes again. "The jungle was cleared. There were people, all sorts of people, just milling around in, in here." She made a sweeping gesture, indicating the clearing and probably the jungle behind it. "There were rows of crops growing in the fields, and the temple looked sharp and new. There were people, too. I saw about a hundred people in the central square." She fell silent, and something hung in the air between us. Suddenly, her beautiful eyes sparked. "Hey, where's the spine?" "I dunno," I said stupidly, then caught up with her thoughts. "Uh. We better go get it before some digger decides that it'd make a nice piece to sell . . . " Chas was already headed for her trench. I tore off my headphones and ran after her. I caught up with her as she climbed back into the three meter wide pit carved across what had been the central court of the settlement. I climbed down and saw Chas standing near where she had fallen. She was crouching near the spine. It was still there, but Chas seemed reluctant to touch it. Not thinking, I bent down and picked it up. An electric shock jolted up my arm, as if I had stuck a pin in a socket. Chas was gone. Bewildered, I stood up, looking for her. She had been right next to me when I picked up the spine, and now she wasn't. I climbed out of the trench to find her. I was somewhere else. Instead of a small glade carved out of a rainforest, I was at a completely restored Maya site. I looked behind me and discovered that the trench had disappeared. People were walking around, the square busy with the comings and doings of these people dressed as ...classic Maya. Wait a minute. I closed my eyes and shook my head to clear it. I was not in the center of a Maya city. The inhabitants of the city were not walking around me. When I opened my eyes, nothing had changed. The temple of the Old Ones was no longer a crumbling relic, but a recently carved, pure white edifice. The comb on top of it stood like an extended middle finger to the sky. Every possible surface of the walls was carved, intricate and delicate bas relief so sharp it was almost painful to look at. I was used to the crumbling and weathered modern carvings, ruined by ten centuries of rain, wind and water, but here they were, fresh, less than a century old. This would be a major find - to see these carvings in the original condition . . . Snap out of it, shithead, I thought. This isn't real, I'm just seeing what I want to see. Any minute I'm going to wake up and this will all be a dream. Any minute now . . . Beyond the carved temple were rows of wheat and maize, rippling in the wind like a golden ocean. The sky was dark with rolling clouds, and I smelled the threat of rain. Lightning jumped between clouds, and the retort of thunder rumbled in the humid sky. Well, I thought, Might as well enjoy it while I'm out of it. I noticed that I was still carrying the green spine. Absently, I flipped it in the air. With a jarring thud, I landed in the watery muck at the bottom of Chas's trench. Chas was standing over me, gently shaking my head. "Aaag, shit, quit it . . . " I thrashed around, knocking the cool hands off my face. Silently, Chas withdrew. Her face was concerned, and the sky above her was darker than I remembered it. "What happened? All I remember was touching the spine and then I was in this weird Maya place . . . " Chas just raised an eyebrow, but it was enough. I stopped babbling and blinked a few times. We both looked at the green spine that was a few inches >from my right hand. We looked at each other, unspoken understanding rushing through each of us. Chas was the first to open her mouth. "This is too weird." She seemed to be taking this fairly well. I wasn't. "I ain't touching that thing. No way." Chas took off her hat and used the brim to scoop up the green menace, careful not to let her skin touch it. "I think I'll put this someplace nice and safe," she said, wrapping the hat tightly around her prize. I raised an eyebrow. "Where? Wait, what are you going to do with that thing?" Her cracked crystal eyes glowed. "This is an unprecedented opportunity to do research. Think of it! For the first time since Cortez, we have an opportunity to observe the Maya as they were." I let my scepticism show. "Right, sure. How the hell are you going to publish this? Who's going to believe you?" I was warming to the argument. I didn't like this green thing at all, and I really didn't want Chas using it. Especially not Chas. "What are you going to do, conduct guided tours of this place and pass that thing around?" She wasn't listening. She had climbed out of the trench and was heading for her tent. I jogged to catch up with her in the deepening Peten blackness. "Come on. What are you going to do with that?" She stopped, and I caught up with her. Her eyes looked up at me, and my face flushed under the attention. She spoke quietly, "This is the perfect archaeological tool. We can go back and watch them as they were. I'll publish my findings as deductions. What's the problem?" I pursed my lips. I knew I was being irrational. I took a hold of her elbow. "I don't like that thing. It scares me. Please leave it? Chas, please?" Her eyes dropped. "I can't. This is too important." I couldn't accept it. I flailed around to find something that would stop her. "What are you going to do when this stint is up? Pass it along to the next person from Peaslee who comes along? How about Dr. Fussy, she'd get a real kick out of this thing." I smiled at the thought. She returned a wry grin, and brushed an errant golden hair out of her mouth. "God, you're right. She'd go around pointing out all the things they were doing wrong." A light chuckle flickered between us. The smile faded, and she looked straight into my eyes. "I'm going to use it." She reached out, and gave my hand a squeeze, then walked into the mist towards her tent. The nocturnal monkeys were just beginning to howl as I walked to my tent. The next day, it was business as usual, no mention of the spine, Chas was just as bright and cheery as she always was. We dug and in the hot afternoon, I brushed the mud from onyx and pottery. Chas went about her duties, chatting with the diggers and Fussy cataloging the pottery, the eccentrics, and drawing the carvings on the temple. I watched Chas closely, but it wasn't until two weeks later that I noticed her drawing was much more detailed than the weathered carvings. There were other signs. She had a whole section of her sketch book that she didn't show to anyone, and for the first time, she argued with Dr. Fossey about site use and management. Chas's new theories were fresh and deviated >from her previous ideas, and she wouldn't budge one inch from them. I tried to keep out of the discussions as they escalated. After three weeks, they were regularly shouting at each other. One night, about a month after we had discovered the spine, I broke from sleep to the dark, muggy black of the Peten. The howling monkeys were mating in the trees, shrieking loudly at each other. It had taken me two weeks to learn to sleep through a whole night. Something else was out there . . . "Dave?" It was just the ghost of a whisper, barely audible over the screams of the primates. "Chas?" I called, "Jesus, come in." She came in, legs stiff, arm movements jerky. Her face was a tight, inexpressive mask. I gathered the sheet around my thighs, as Chas pushed aside the mosquito netting and climbed onto the cot. She sat stiffly on the other end, her breathing sharp, and punctuated. "Chas? Chas? What's wrong?" She was slow in responding. Her voice was raw, and her eyes forlorn when she finally looked at me. "They're scared, Dave. Something's wrong with them." "What? I don't get it. What's wrong?" She swallowed once, then spoke in a low gravelly voice. "They made a sacrifice. They took a prisoner and they suh- sacrificed him." All the blood drained from my face, and I felt queasy. Evidence said that Maya prisoner sacrifices were long, drawn-out and incredibly bloody affairs. Although they didn't practice the wholesale slaughters the Aztecs had, the Maya seemed to have had a particular genius for truly unpleasant torture. Supposedly, blood was collected from a live prisoner and then burned for the gods, giving them vitality. Blood from a living victim was more potent than dead blood, so it made a twisted sort of sense to get the highest "miles per gallon," as it were, by keeping the unfortunate victim alive as long as possible. Chas continued. "They drove a," she swallowed, and licked her lips, "a spine through his tongue, and then, they drew a cord through it. I think it was eight feet, Dave. Then th-they took the same spine and p-pierced his lips and penis." I shuddered at the same time she did. "God, he screamed for over an hour," she covered her ears, as if she could hear him now, a thousand years later. She drew herself into a tighter ball-- self-contained and impenetrable. She didn't weep, but her breath came in gasps. We sat for a while. I longed to take her into my arms and hold her, but I couldn't. She sat alone at the other side of my bed, a hundred miles away. All I found to say ten minutes later was, "why didn't you drop the spine?" Oddly enough, the question relaxed her somewhat, and she looked up at me with her beautiful eyes red and puffy. She sighed deeply, almost embarrassed by the answer that was coming. "I- I couldn't. I knew I couldn't go back if he was still alive. I wouldn't be able to face that screaming again" She avoided looking at me, sighing again. "Whatever else they were, Dave, they were butchers and savages. I guess it never really occurred to me what they were." My mind groped for something to say - something to make her feel better. I dredged up a quote from an anthropologist I had known at Peaslee. "It's a different culture. We're not here to judge right from wrong. We must try to be as impartial as we can." It was the wrong thing to say. She brushed aside the mosquito netting and stood up. "Their fucking priest poked fucking holes in his fucking body and they all just fucking stood there and watched him do it! Don't you fucking tell me to ignore it! Torture is not something fucking civilized people do, is it?" Outside, the monkeys began shrieking again. Her face was drawn back into a skull of anger. She whirled out of the dark confines of the tent and left running. I was alone with a sunk feeling in my stomach. I had done the wrong thing, again. I mentally replayed the conversation five times, each time coming up with something better to say. Going after her wouldn't do any good, so I lay down on the cot again. I slept after half an hour of silent tears I dreamed that night. I dreamed I was in New Haven, in an ambulance, heading for a call. It was a tractor-trailer accident, I remembered. We got to the scene, and it was a mess; the truck had struck a car and then run it over, crushing it. There couldn't be anything alive in the car, I thought. We proceeded with the extraction, and got out most of a young couple, probably out for a date. Neither was breathing. We did it all - intubation, two IV's, Adenosine, defibrilation. Nothing worked, so we had at start CPR and artificial respiration. I was working with blood all over my hands, pressing in the column-fractured ribs, watching the chest collapse and rebound liquidly with only a few ribs to support it. One, two three, four; breathe. One, two three, four; breathe. I heard behind me that LifeStar was coming and I shouted for them to get a doctor on board. A doctor could declare the two corpses dead. We couldn't. I kept pumping; one, two, three, four; breathe. One, two three, four; breathe. There was no response, and I hadn't expected one, but I had to keep the pace. One, two three, four; breathe. One, two three, four; breathe. Then I noticed the people around me were packing up and getting ready to leave. The other victim was sitting up and talking to a fireman. They all started to leave, and I was still sitting on the guy's chest, pumping away: one, two three, four; breathe. Slowly, one by one, everyone else left - the ambulance, the police, the fire truck. Everyone. The woman from the car seemed to have struck up a friendship with the one of the fireman, and they went off together in his car. Lifestar never came, but I was still there, pumping away, one, two, three, four; breathe. One two, three, four; breathe. My arms ached and I was light-headed. One, two, three, four; breathe. One two, three, four; breathe. Everyone else left until it was just me in the middle of the street, legally bound to keep working CPR until relieved by a doctor. Each push was an effort, my whole body aching with each pump. One. Two. Three. Four. Breathe. One. Two. Three. Four. I woke up sweating, my arms aching. My glowing watch face told me it was twenty past two in the morning. I slowed my breathing and wished for something stiff to drink. This shit's really getting to me I thought. A week later, I sneaked into Chas's tent to have a look at her journal. Chas was off analyzing pollen samples with Fossey, and I figured they'd be at it for some time. Her sketch pad was sitting on her cot. Feeling guilty, and looking furtively around me, I peeked at the drawings. They were amazing. I hadn't realized the extent of Chas's artistic talents. There were more than two dozen sketched of faces- the young, the old, and sometimes the clothes they wore. I noticed that they all wore a look of worry- deep lines furrowed around the tightly close mouths and into foreheads. These people were scared, and Chas's art made them seem very real. At times it was like the mass of faces was staring at me, accusing me. There was a full-page picture of a priest at the foot of the Old Ones' temple. He had apparently fallen down the steep front stairs. His head was twisted at an impossible angle, the side of his head smashed against the paving stones. Later, there was a written account of her travels, Chas's crabbed handwriting describing the smells, sounds, and other things that couldn't be drawn. There was more than eight pages to it, so I quickly skimmed to the last entry. "These people are terrified. I think that they have in some way offended their gods. Everyone has this doomed look that I can see in their eyes and faces. There is also what looks like a hurricane approaching. The first rain was beginning to fall, and they looked at the sky like it was the end of the world. The funny part is, they all gathered in the center of the ceremonial green and stood there. Some were weeping, others looking stoically up into the rain. I don't remember anything like this in any reference. They just keep looking at the sky, as if they expected the wrath of God to come down." I was scared. If this little magic widget worked, maybe the Old Gods were not as imaginary as we thought they were. One rational part of my mind told me that this was nonsense, and that there were no pagan gods. I remembered that this was the same part of my mind that said I hadn't been back to a classic Maya site. I didn't know which side to believe. I threw the sketch book back on her bed and ran out of the tent, my brain buzzing. I took Chas aside that night, after dinner. "Don't go out tonight." I had wanted to say more, but words collided in my throat like boxcars. I wanted to say "I care" or maybe more, but I couldn't. She only gave me an odd look and went back to her tent. She didn't come back that night. We discovered a breathing corpse in the morning, eyes rolled back into her head, a thin line of drool on her cheek. The marvelous light in her eyes gone, replaced by a dull, filmy gray, like a rock worn smooth by a stream. Chas was gone. While everyone else was buzzing about trying to figure out what was wrong with her, I found the jade spine where she had dropped it. I wrapped it in a handkerchief and stuffed it into a corner of her trunk. The Guatemalans were going to send a four-wheel drive vehicle to come and get Chas. It probably would take at least two days, but I spent my time packing, trying to keep my mind off the breathing corpse in Chas's tent. Technically, there was nothing wrong with her; just no brain activity. She breathed, and she swallowed when stimulated, but her eyes didn't react to light, and they never moved. I told Fossey that I'd be shipping out with Chas- I couldn't take the stress. I was glad that she hadn't fought; I was in no shape to argue with her. When the sun went down that day, I only had one more thing to do. I gathered one of the sledgehammers and my trowel. After searching around for a few minutes I found a pair of beaten leather gloves and a belt pouch. I went back to Chas's tent, and plundered her green treasure, and took the thing out into the jungle. The monkeys were in a fury that night, screaming as if one of them had been murdered, or sacrificed. I shuddered, hearing the echoes of a dead man's agony. Maybe the Maya taught them to scream that way. I found a flat rock, and took out the spine to look at it. It had a sharp tip, with a slightly rougher edge at the other end. Slowly, deliberately, I looked down the hollow shaft, and saw a fine lace of carvings on the surface I hadn't noticed before. It was slippery smooth, and I almost dropped it as I turned it over in the unfeeling gloves. Curiosity satisfied, I put it on the flat rock. It sort of gleamed as it sat there, a small instrument of death, a gateway to the past. The only piece of real magic I had ever known. I sat next to it for several long minutes, tempted to rip off the gloves and be transported to the past, perhaps to find Chas there. I took off the gloves and reached for it, then checked myself. Suddenly resolute, I stood, and brought the sledge down. The spine pulsed with energy an instant before impact, then tiny pieces of green squirted out >from under the sledge. I didn't believe what I had done for an instant. Ripping off my gloves, I knelt by the rock and put my bare flesh on the mashed green spot that had been the spine. For a second, tiny jolts tickled my fingers, like static from a television. Then nothing. I sat with my head in my hands, tears streaming down my face, but my sobs were lost to the howls of the monkeys. ______________________________________________________________________________ John Goodrich was born in New Hampshire in 1969, and returned there in 1988 to go to college. He is currently a graduate student at New Mexico State University, studying to be a high school english teacher. He obviously has far too much time on his hands. jgoodric@nmsu.edu ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ DR TOMORROW "Without warning, the teachings of the Masters were suddenly by Marshall F. Gilula being externalized right before my eyes and it was Part 4 of 5 everything I could do just to keep up." Copyright(c)1991 ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 4 Monday Logos Who? This morning I'm not in the least freaked by anything. It seemed like we got back around sunrise, but I'm not certain. I regret still being Primitive enough to need my sleep, and when I wake up, there is a 120 pound German Shepherd lying in the bed between Pearl E. Mae and me. Bullet looks at me, puts his nose under my pillow, and attempts to beat me to death with his wagging tail. He knows that he is not supposed to be in the bed, and Pearl E. Mae giggles as turns and licks her face in an attempt to gain her approval. She is sitting by the side of the bed observing us and waiting for someone's permission to jump up on the bed. I slide out of the bed onto the floor and hug She-Ra, whose tail is now wagging with pleasure. She is such a joy, compact and tough, but soft and gentle, and she has done over a year and a half of unpaid baby-sitting with Bullet, whom she has raised to be a soft and gentle dog despite his large economy size and his ferocious demeanor. Her good nature extends to the way that she tolerates Bullet's nose and his massive presence jealously intruding into the intimacy She-Ra and I are having. When I pet one, the other demands it. She-Ra, Bullet, and I all get tied up in a pile of paws, arms, tails, legs, three heads, and two sets of very sharp teeth. All three of us are making growling, grunting sounds. The only problem with being a "member of the pack" is that occasionally the four-legged members bite on me in the same way they chew on each other, and I have to quickly withdraw from the pretend fracas because my skin is literally not thick enough. Pearl E. Mae and my other Eternal room mates gathered around the pile of Lyle plus dogs on the floor. They had never observed any of my special communication with Bullet and She-Ra. To me it was just part of an ordinary day. As I wiped some dog spittle out of my eye, I noticed that both Quail and Pearl E. Mae were smiling and crying as they watched us on the floor. They understood that some Primitives are evolved enough to really communicate with other species in the universal languages of love and play. Quail explained that my playing with the dogs reminded her of what her last aquatic life form valued most in existence - the same free-spirited gamboling with a powerful sense of comfort and safety. Pearl E. Mae scooted over to where I was on the floor, put her arms around me, and kissed the side of my face. She moved her wet eyelids against my face and told me she was very glad that the I.S.I. had sent her here to be in the DR TOMORROW project. Both dogs lay on the floor next to us, and I had one of those brief, momentary feelings of intense happiness...the kind of spontaneous peak experience that you always remember in great detail when looking back. It seemed at that moment that all the forces of the universe were in harmony and that there was very little more I could hope for. A far out Eternal old lady, two beautiful dogs, five other new friends, and a recently-overhauled mind and body. What a naive attitude. Considering everything that I had just been exposed to over the past few days, I should have known better. What about my megastepped mind? Why did I not sense or see that it was about to hit the fan with all the ugliness of the universe? I guess even megastepped Eternals are human and have their flaws. For me, it was a matter of the newness - new friends, new music, new old lady, and new philosophy. Without warning, the teachings of the Masters were suddenly being externalized right before my eyes and it was everything I could do just to keep up. It almost felt like jet lag, with a vague combination of weakness, headache, and disorientation. All the previous study, meditation, psychedelics, music, and generally righteous living did not equip me for what was to follow. Well, of course that was true! Why else would the megastepping have been necessary? It felt like everything was going too fast. And what was the reason? Why was all of this happening? Was all of this for real? And I wasn't too sure how much of the disorientation was coming from the megastepping procedure. Of course, I really appreciated the numerous changes in my physical body. Who wouldn't? I loved Pearl E. Mae's near-perfect body, but mine was pretty much the same, too. My opinion about the changes in my mind was not clear: I had mixed feelings. It is much easier to see what your abdominal wall looks like, but how do you visualize your memories? I can understand that certain synergisms are possible during MindLink/HeartLight, but you are experiencing the effect of seven minds. When MindLink/HeartLight is over, I don't have as much confidence and belief in my individual mind, I guess. Before becoming an Eternal, I never spent much time questioning my own mind. Not that meditation doesn't involve the mind, but what I usually have done in meditation requires that I still my mind, not explore all its nooks and crannies. And since the megastepping, I only know that my mind hooks up with others very easily during MindLink/HeartLight. My mind appears to have many more nooks and crannies than I ever imagined. Other than this, I really don't know. The door bell begins ringing its "Close Encounters" melody. She-Ra and Bullet both run across the apartment to the front door, but neither one is barking. Sure sign that it's either Julian or Gabriella. And it is Julian with a lit Winston and a large rolled spliff behind his left ear. He absentmindedly hands me the Winston, and I hand it back to him. Julian is very cool. He pretends that he doesn't notice my quick return of the cigarette, walks in a bit stiffly, and sits down on the couch. Bullet immediately gets up on the couch and tries to put his massive head into Julian's lap. This blows Julian's cool because he is a sucker for dogs too. "Bullet, get off me. I need to put my head in your lap! Maybe you ain't seeing ghosts." "Julian, that dog loves you whether you're seeing ghosts or not." "Hey, Lyle, mon.... Gabriella's ghost be messing with me mind big time." "Gabriella's what?" "Her ghost be irritating me, mon. No matter what or how much I hit the spliff, her spirit still be there talking to me." "Julian, are you being straight with me?" "Lyle, mon, me be as straight as possible. It be Gabriella because I know her for sure. You remember that I know her before you, mon. We go back to Kingston." "Why are you irritated by someone's spirit? If it's Gabriella spirit, why is she hassling you?" "I say irritate, mon. I mean irritate. She be telling me foolishness. She be saying Watch out for Lyle like you be bad, mon. Like maybe you be killin' or hurtin' people. She look like maybe she have the bad spirits with her. Say you be with the Evil and Bad side." "Gabriella never believed in any of that stuff." Which is the truth. Gabriella shunned psychics and astrologers generally. She felt that such people took advantage of the poor and the ignorant. She would even point out examples of the well-heeled socialites pictured on video with their own seances and proclaim that the socialites were poor and ignorant also because they believed in such things. And Julian was conveying messages he feels came from Gabriella now in the thick of things in the spirit world which she maligned so much. Julian put out the Winston in the ash tray and fired up the lovingly rolled spliff. Bullet left his place on the couch and padded over to the other side of the room to avoid the billowing clouds of smoke from Julian and the spliff. Julian passed the spliff to me. I held it for a moment and, in a practiced gesture, passed it back to him. He seemed to ignore that I wasn't smoking because he didn't comment on it. Instead, he took a few deep tokes, and then passed the spliff to Pearl E. Mae, who also held it briefly and then passed it back to him. There was a moment of tension as Julian consciously decided to just hang on to the spliff himself. He continued: "Gabriella, she say I must save you from those who are Evil. She sound very scary to me. I don't know how she knows, but she say to watch out for your new group. `Be crazy, but that's all. No more. Just that. Now maybe you feel like not me bro...." "Hey, man...don't be silly! How can the best drummer in Coconut Grove not be my bro? And all the deep stuff we been through? Maybe Gabriella didn't believe in spirits, but I do. I'm sorry that her spirit is causing you so much pain. Maybe you're worried that I didn't know you were married to Gabriella in Jamaica when you both lived in Kingston." Julian became very pale, because evidently I had hit upon something that had been a secret. Just after the words left my mouth, I realized that there was no reason for me to know this information, if, in fact, it were true. But I just didn't know why or how the knowledge came to me. Somehow, I had access to this information "How you know this, mon?" "I don't know, Julian. It just came into my mind." "Well it be true. Blow me away because I never tell you. I never tell no people not Jamaican. How you know, mon?" "Julian, maybe it's a part of my megastepped mind." "Mega-who?" "Megastepped means what the electrical nuclear discharge did to me. You remember. I already told you all about it, and you saw the changes in my body, immediately." "Sure, sure. Your body look like for sure Man of God in Babylon. So why not same thing with your mind." "So you understand. The mind has been transformed too. More sensitive and maybe more powerful. Because you and I are close already, I'm just much better now at getting into your vibration. Picking up information about you and Gabriella is probably a very simple demonstration of the transformations that my mind has been going through." "You not be working for the Darkside. I don't feel it. If you were, I know I feel it. But why Gabriella say so much about you in danger and you work for Evil." "I don't know, Julian. The truth is what I have told you. My understanding is that we Eternals are definitely on God's team and working for the good side. If the Eternals and the Guardians all believe in a Supreme Being, and manifest themselves on the physical plane in light, how could you consider any other possibility. Beings from the Forces of Darkness cannot manifest themselves on the physical plane, although they can affect physical plane events." "Heavy, mon. Maybe me mind not be ready for all of this." "Don't take it in all at once. You don't have to believe any of it if you don't want to." "O.K., mon. But I want to tell you that I been with Gabriella this week, and last week, too. I did not want to screw my brother's woman, but I had a very strong feeling about never see her again. Couldn't help myself, mon. And I used a rubber, both times, too." Julian hung out with us that morning in the duplex. We did our MindLink/HeartLight and let him sit in the circle with us. As a Rastafarian person, meditation was nothing new to him. He even went along with eyes-closed format and afterwards claimed he received a profound healing. He teared, spoke with obvious lump in his throat, and emotionally hugged each of us in turn. After letting the dogs out into the fenced yard and pool area, we closed up the apartment and all went down to the Peacock Cafe for breakfast. That is to say, Julian and I ate breakfast and the rest of us sipped on diet uncola. So when we got back to the duplex and found the dogs dead, it was a stark, sadistic shock. Both Shepherds were floating, limp in the pool. Reality had just ripped the screen out from under me. I felt the universe crumbling in on me. It was not possible for both my dogs to be taken from me. At the same time. Bullet wasn't even full grown. They could not be dead. I turned on Bruce's GSR translator and speaker. The organic security system was fairly specific. According to Bruce's steady, buzzing GSR response, there had been no one there since we last left. It was simply too much for me to assimilate. Even with my megastepped vehicle. Grief is grief, and there was no way to get around it. Things became gloomier and gloomier, and I simply went mute. Julian took over and called the animal hospital. He told Dr. Michaels that I was getting ready to go off the deep end because we had just discovered both of my Shepherds floating dead in our pool. The vet from the office around the post office came over right after we called, checked out the animals, and then offered to have the dogs cremated for us. He saw what he said were classic findings of cyanide poisoning, and he drew blood specimens for later corroboration. I appreciated his offer to cremate She-Ra and Bullet, but refused. In a cracking voice, I told him I would take care of their burials. The vet was tired-looking. Even his handle-bar mustache seemed to droop. We forced him to take $100 from us as payment for the house call. As he left the duplex, I felt myself start to lose it. I burst into tears. The machinery ground to a halt and I could only feel my pain for my beloved shepherds. I could see both She-Ra and Bullet alive and rough-housing around the apartment. It was exquisitely painful for me to look at either of their corpses. When I walked over to where their stiffening bodies were and sat down and hugged both of them, something really snapped inside me. It was fair for them to be dead and I really didn't know why it should happen, either. I sobbed uncontrollably and felt great pain within my chest in the heart space. As I continued to sob, the pain in my chest became transformed into a sensation of fire, and then into a sensation of liquid fire. My heart was filled with liquid fire. The common-sense objections to having liquid fire in one's chest were pushed from my consciousness in the grief of the moment. The molten liquid gushed out of my chest into the bodies of both dogs. The gushing continued for some moments, and then I realized that the Eternals were all sitting around me. Our HeartLight had turned on without my conscious awareness. I sat up, closed up eyes, and entered the second MindLink/HeartLight of the day. Yo-Vah appeared to us and asked what had transpired to cause him to hear and record my subjective grief and our collective distress. He was worried that it might have been some problems with dyssynchronisms because of the megastepping. His face grew more concerned when he heard about Bullet and She-Ra. Yo-Vah said that the Forces of Darkness had already begun their attempts at intimidation by extracting life energies from our pets. He reminded us that we would have no trouble reanimating them if we hurried up about it. The challenges of the problem, however, would evoke from us the requisite abilities. In fact, the liquid fire gush from my chest to the shepherds was one of our first signs of "the requisite abilities." Yo-Vah officially invited us to meet him at Kennedy Park that evening at which time the Eternals would get a tour of the saucer craft. He suggested that we leave the dogs inside with Al when we were gone, and he gave us a listing of hexadecimal code that Al could use for generating a randomly shifting pattern of low volume dissonant tones. These tone patterns could be used as a sonic net to protect the Eternals from transtemporal field-induction linking. Like the linking used by Forces of Darkness. This transtemporal application of field-induction linking enables the Forces of Darkness to parasitically drain the life energies from others who are in some way compromised. As Yo-Vah's image faded from our annealed One Mind, the group cohesion swiftly lifted me out of my paralyzing grief. The molten fire in my chest was transformed into blinding white light which surrounded all of us and temporarily blocked out awareness of anything other than the light. Although we were all enclosed and protected within the One Higher Mind of our MindLink/HeartLight, we could still feel an overall flickering of the light that happened two or three times. I sensed that this interruption was a purging of FOD induction links. This was a purging of the FOD transtemporal field-induction links that had been going up for the past few days. Our formation as a group and as an I.S.I. project for sure didn't go unnoticed by the FOD. And in clearing out whatever negative links were responsible for the shepherds' physical plane deaths, we had also made an energy connection to the Negative. Awareness of garbage is sometimes necessary before it is possible to flush it or vent it, even on an etheric, astral, or mental plane. Because we were aware of the Negative, we Eternals would have a more functional knowledge of MindLink/HeartLight by understanding FOD energies as random garbage to be carefully and assiduously cleaned out on a regular basis. Like tooth brushing and flossing. I was never so happy to get a wet tongue in the face as when I came out of MindLink/HeartLight this time. Bullet, hair matted from his time in the pool, had crawled into my lap, and was licking my face. Talk about roller coaster highs and lows. Because She-Ra was still groggy on the floor, Pearl E. Mae brought out the spheres and we Eternals focused our energies consciously on the small gray shepherd by using the spheres together in the way that Yo-Vah taught us. Pearl E. Mae had even given the eighth sphere to Julian so that he could meditate on She-Ra with us and maybe understand how we were using the spheres. A small cloud of brilliant white light surrounded She-Ra. The energy cloud pulsated around She-Ra for what seemed to be a long time. I thought that our heart rates were all synchronized into the pulsation rate of the brilliant white light. At the moment that I perceived our synchronized heart rates, She-Ra was back up and in leaping good form. She jumped up and down in the air several times to express her general joyousness at finding all of us suddenly there. Tail wagging, she carefully went around to each person in the group to let them know how glad she was to be back. Julian, who had been cool all the way through, was now the one who was crying silently with the uncharacteristic tears staining his dashiki-shirt. ____________________ And I would really like to know why there were so many warnings about the Forces of Darkness. I understand about what happened with the dogs, at least about the part where we were able to bring them back. But that's just good Eternals and new and improved Medicine of the future. How the bad guys (or the bad energies) got to my dogs I'll never know. The metal spheres were certainly an unusual tool for Yo-Vah to gift us with. The spheres turn out to manifest themselves at many different levels of reality - on the physical plane and on the astral plane, for example. We were given the spheres while all of us were out of body. We then took the spheres with us back to the duplex while we were still out of body. Then, after the MindLink/HeartLight, we were able to touch, feel, and handle the metal spheres at a physical plane level. When Yo-Vah spoke of virtual reality, he reminded us that the Forces of Darkness were much more powerful in the provinces of virtual realities. In a virtual universe, the FOD could run roughshod in uncontrollable fashion. Terror, intimidation, apathy, destructiveness, and hatred were all very possible and all amplified as much as was allowed. But the obverse could easily obtain. In a virtual virtual universe, everything was truly up for grabs. The FOD was just as likely to be absolutely helpless in a virtual virtual universe, because the operational rules were so much more obscure and symbolic. The Forces of Light routinely patrolled reality at multiple levels. The saucercraft travelled just as well in virtual universes as in physical plane here-and-now universes. Patrolling the physical plane occupied most of the FOL's attention, given the temporal span that had to be covered. Navigating virtual universes posed a severe mathematical conundrum for any guidance system, so each Guardian saucercraft usually comes equipped with a plasma guidance system that does require a rocket scientist, or at least a good hacker to operate it. I really don't know how to find the plasma guidance area in the controls. And I'm not sure about what is going to happen when I press the various multicolored contact plates. The high-resolution graphics look nearly three-dimensional and have chromatic holographic patterns that are visually quite arresting and distract me from learning what their functional significance really is. ____________________ Julian said that he was going home and going to bed. That it had been much heavy a day for him already. We logged Julian on to one of Al's terminals, set up an account for him in the Unix network, and gave him a password and high-level access. Su-Shan explained to Julian how he could get into the apartment and inactivate the hexadecimal tone generator by letting Al recognize him. He always has had a key to my place, and now he was concerned about helping us see to it that the two shepherds were safe. We told Julian that we would be going out this evening and leaving the dogs in with Al. We walked him outside, and he and I hugged. "You be clean now, mon. I know it. No problem, mon. God be with you. Truly sounds crazy, with all the stuff that's been happening. But it feels all right in my stomach, mon. You be O.K. Maybe Gabriella's spirit be telling me something different than what I hear, now." "Thanks for telling me about Gabriella, man. Both of us still love her, and I'm glad we're straight on her. Maybe Dr. Tomorrow will have the privilege of two acoustic drum kits when you aren't busy with some other gig. You and Su-Shan open up a hole in the Earth's atmosphere, for sure." "For sure my brother. I think you are into the big time now, mon. Your guitar even sounds better. I play with you any time, Lyle. But please be careful with evil and the dark side. Better not be mixed up with your music. I can sing for Jesus, and for The Lord, mon, but don't get me mixed up with any of that Devil stuff. Not your style, mon." "Just for throwing out the garbage and housecleaning, Julian. Nothing else." "The dark side be all around. Don't need no flying saucer man to tell me. But where you get the metal balls?" "Those silver spheres? From the flying saucer man." "I believe you, but don't mess with me mind. Make sure to talk to Bruce before you leave on that journey. Godspeed, mon." We took leave of each other in the sweltering Miami sun under a couple of Royal Palms. By the time Julian got down to Bayshore Drive, he realized that he still had the silver sphere in his pocket. He would call later. The Eternals were a bit sombre during their music rehearsal. Al was also unusually quiet. Yo-Vah had said that "the requisite abilities" would appear. That was definitely happening. "Requisite abilities" were appearing all over the place. Where did the recognition of the FOD, the dark side, or evil come in? All the negative was a necessary concomitant of the positive, and vice versa. Yet it was good AND evil, not good OR evil. There was a huge difference. Primitives nearly never grasped the philosophical implications of this difference. The Eternals did. They discussed it. Noman, who had spent at least one lifetime on a penal colony made a strong case for some musical compositions which had a mixture of dark and light features, so as to more efficiently process both positive and negative energies through the music and the music-making process. The reality of Life includes both positive and negative in the process.