by Paul Neuhaus
El and I each got back into our respective beds. “You seem kind of blasé about it,” he said.
I shrugged my shoulders even though he couldn’t see me. “Nothing surprises me anymore,” I replied.
After a long pause—during which we could still hear the scratching—El said. “If I kill that thing, will you take me back?”
“Don’t let its size fool you. That little bird bitch could tear off your head and shit down your neck.”
“Still, if I could— “
“Go back to sleep!”
4
The Conclave of Universal Consciousness
We were awakened by the sound of the Conclave of Universal Consciousness, which apparently got into full swing just as the sun was rising. I stood up and went right to the window. I threw back the curtains to not only let in some light but to confirm for myself that the Arae was no longer there. She wasn’t. I picked up a pillow and threw it at Elijah. He was startled awake. I’d triggered his fight or flight mechanism, and he looked around for something to either attack or flee from. “If you’re going to take a shower,” I said. “Take it fast. We’re gonna hit the ground running.” I pointed into the air to indicate the sounds of revelry coming from the nearby Parthenon. “They’re already underway.”
Wiener got out of bed, mumbling about a toothbrush.
“Use your finger and some shampoo.”
“Ew.” But he made no further comment as he went into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the shower.
“What’s your plan?” Hope said.
“What do you mean, what’s my plan? My plan, first and foremost, is to find Keri and get her out of here. On a secondary level, it’s to observe. If I see any weirdness, I’ll take it in and act accordingly. Or not, if it’s too big to handle.”
“Okay. Simple and to the point.”
“I don’t guess you can help us find Keri…” Hope had the ability to track Mythniks, but they had to have evil leanings for it to work.
“Nah,” she replied. “Keri wasn’t evil before, and she’s certainly not evil now. More than anything, she’s confused. They’ve got her drugged and cooperative. Exploited people actually rank higher than good people on my good versus bad scale.”
“That makes sense. We’ll have to eyeball it then.”
“Good luck. If the noise is any indication, the place is already crawling with space hippies.”
El came out of the bathroom, pulling his shirt over his still-wet torso. He hadn’t bothered doing anything with his hair. Mostly because he didn’t have a comb. “Your turn,” he said.
I went past him into the steamy restroom. He’d left the water running, so I checked the temperature, got naked and jumped in. I washed as best I could with the tiny bar of soap then jumped out. I keep my hair pretty short, so there wasn’t much to do in that department. I put my pants and my t-shirt back on and went back into the main room. “Okay,” I said. “We’re gonna stop at the 7-11 to get whatever food we can get then we’re gonna walk over there. I can’t imagine there’ll be any parking. This sounds like a real hootenanny.”
El smiled. “‘Hootenanny’? Did you come from Greece by way of the Ozarks?”
“Did you become the mayor of Idiot Town by way of being a straight-up dumbass?”
“Good one,” Hope said sarcastically as I put her into her harness and put my arms through the straps.
When we got outside, my eyes had only a little ways to go to adjust. The clouds above us were thick and the light was gray.
“This looks like it could be some serious rain,” Elijah said behind me. “We could have a Woodstock situation on our hands.” He was referring to the heavy rains and mud that’d troubled that long-ago rock festival.
I went over to the Firebird and popped the trunk to take stock of my armory. The options weren’t good. There was no way I was getting through security with something as obvious as a gladius. The swords were smaller than your average blade, but they were still conspicuous. Seeing no better option, I chose my brass knuckles (with their “peekaboo” engraving), and my pepper spray. I put the knuckles into my left pocket and started to put the spray into my right.
“Hey,” Wiener said. “What about me? I don’t wanna go into this crazy cult meeting with nothing for protection.”
I sighed and handed him the pepper spray. “Be really careful with that. I can’t help thinking you’re gonna end up spraying me before the day is through.”
“On accident or on purpose?” Hope chimed in.
“Could go either way,” El said with a grin.
Just what I needed: Tag-team needling from my ex-boyfriend and a girl in jug.
We walked to the 7-11 two doors down and got awful coffee and prepackaged pastries oozing with sweetness. We stood eating our breakfast and looking down the street to the Conclave. The affair was much bigger than anything I’d pictured in my head before going out there. It wasn’t Woodstock, but it was definitely a smaller, creepier cousin to Woodstock.
“Do you think we’ll need tickets or passes or anything?” Elijah said around his Honeybun.
“No, that flier was left on my door. They must’ve wanted every Tom, Dick and Larry to come.”
“Or,” he replied. “They wanted you to come so they stuck the flier on your door.”
I gave him the side-eye. “Let’s not get paranoid. Although, I can’t say for sure you’re wrong.”
The two of us threw our crumpled plastic wraps and our half-drunk coffees into the trash and started hoofing it for the event.
As we walked, I said to El, “Hope and I talked about it while you were in the shower… There’s some weirdness going on here. Some weirdness I’d like to get to the bottom of, but it’s way, way down the priority ladder compared to Keri. If we see Keri and we can get to her, we’re snagging her and bailing. No sightseeing, no detective work, no nothing.”
“You’re preaching to the choir. I was never interested in anything but getting my daughter back.”
“We might have to kidnap her, so don’t hesitate. Some of her fellow culties might try and interfere. If they do, don’t hold back. You might have to jack some jaws before the day is done.”
He sighed. “You’re the only one set up to jack jaws. You’ve got brass knuckles. All I got was this stupid spray.”
“Don’t mock the spray. That spray’s strong enough to knock Cerberus on his ass.”
“Are you saying that from experience?”
“Kind of.” The incident with Cerberus and the pepper spray hadn’t gone quite like I’d planned it. But I wasn’t going to tell him that.
By then we’d arrived at the edge of the Conclave. The festival started at the highway and touched the restaurant on its other side. It stretched away from the road almost as far as the eye could see. I scanned the outskirts of the growing crowd. All of them looked like vacant-eyed throwbacks. All of them had the same haircut. On my right, a CNN reporter I recognized was passing me, she and her cameraman. I grabbed her elbow. “Hey, can I ask? What’re you guys doing at a weird, hippie cult thing?”
The reporter smiled. Clearly, she wasn’t happy to be there. “I goes where they tell me,” she replied.
“Why do you think they sent you here?”
She shrugged. “CoR’s public relations called and said something was going down here today. Something big. Something newsworthy.”
“And it never occurred to your bosses it might be a line of bullshit?”
“Oh, I’m sure it occurred to them. Either way we win. If all I get is some b-roll of nutbags, it still lets us say to our audience, ‘Hey, look at the freaks’. If something big does go down, it’s win-win.”
I returned her earlier smile. “I appreciate your candor,” I said. I let go of her elbow and she ran off to do her news lady stuff.
El and I forded the crowd and started looking around. Fortunately, we were both tall and could take in a lot as we craned our necks here and there. I found the scene depressingly stereotyp
ical. A lot of the guys were shirtless and wore beads. Many carried acoustic guitars. Nearly all of them had unkempt beards. The girls generally wore fringy or crocheted tops and dirty jeans. The vast majority had flowers in their hair. It really was like stepping back in time to 1968. The label “space hippies” wasn’t unwarranted. At least the “hippie” part. I nearly gagged when, in my peripheral vision, I saw a dude playing hackysack.
“God,” Elijah muttered. “Look at these fools. With their costumes and their… affectedness. It’s pathetic.”
That made me laugh out loud for the first time in a good while.
“What?” he said, genuinely not getting it.
I was still holding my gut.
“What?” he said again, this time with a tad more irritation.
I finally reined in the laughter enough to speak. “You dress up as a cartoon horse and go to places with other people dressed as cartoon horses.”
My ex-boyfriend flushed crimson. “That’s different,” he said, without conviction. Even he knew he’d painted himself into a corner.
“Just keep telling yourself that, Sparkle-mane.”
In two rows down the sides of the event, there were tall towers for lights and sound. Kids hung from these towers just as they had at Woodstock. The fact the organizers had put such an elaborate system in place said to me there’d be music. I said a silent prayer to Zeus I’d be finished and gone by the time that music began. I had a feeling it would sound very much like nineties alternative band The Spin Doctors. During the height of their fame, if someone had locked me in a room for two hours with Spin Doctors music, I would've emerged as the perfect assassin. (If any members of the Spin Doctors are reading this, I would say, “sorry”, but fuck you. You know what you did.)
Just beyond the towers there were rows of tents. The tents vended food and crystals and “sensual massages”, and “third eye openings”. You know, the usual. I made a mental note not to eat anything while I was there. Most of the people running the stalls had the haircut, so it was safe to say whatever grub was on sale probably included coercive chemicals. I told El to do the same.
“Should we split up?” he said. “Maybe we could cover more ground that way. After a while, we can meet underneath Bloop to compare notes.”
I lowered my chin and winced. “That’d be a great idea. If I had a cellphone.”
“You don’t have a cellphone?” Based on his expression, I might just as well have said, “I don’t have a respiratory system”.
“No. I can’t afford it,” I replied. “You saw where I live. It ain’t exactly the Ritz.”
“If you get back together with me, I’ll get you a cellphone.”
“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that. Also, I’m gonna nip this ‘If you get back together with me…’ meme in the bud right now. Cut it out.”
He was genuinely contrite. “You’re right. That was dumb. Scratch it from the record.”
I was already in pretend-it-never-happened mode. “Jesus fuck, there’s a lot of people here. The Church of Reciprocity only has like two hundred thousand members worldwide. I think all of them are here.”
“What if—? “
But El was cut off by a blast of sound from in front of us. Music. A fanfare played at ear-splitting volume. The stage at the far end of the space lit up. Every head turned toward it. Every demeanor in the place (except for El and I’s) changed from raucous to reverently quiet. The black curtain went up. On the stage was the house band in front of a tall black backdrop. Between the band and the backdrop another image of the smiling mascot hung, made of purple and yellow neon. Then the fanfare faded into the theme from the Improbable Pursuit films. That could mean one thing and one thing only. “Improbable” star Taylor Chriss came out on the stage to thunderous applause. Besides founder Nicos Nephus, Chriss was the face of the Church; by far its most famous adherent. Both of his hands were raised. He strolled over to the mic and milked the adulation, his million-dollar smile lighting up the first three rows. Finally, he said, “Hello, righteous people!” Again, the venue erupted into thunderous applause, and Chriss swam in it like a fish. “I am here today, amongst all you wonderful travelers, to do something I feel I was born to do. It is my duty—neigh my privilege—to introduce our founder. And let me tell you…” he took two steps back, beaming. Then two steps forward. He was good at crowd work. “Let me tell you… You picked the absolute right place to be on Earth at this moment in time.” More cheering. “Let me give you the back story. The context. I was in Portugal on a shoot and I got a call from N.N. and he said to me, ‘Taylor, I need you to be with me for an event next month. We’re calling it the Conclave for Universal Consciousness’. And I said, ‘Sounds big’, and he said, ‘Taylor, you have no idea’. Needless to say, I penciled it into my schedule.” Still more cheering. “When I got back from Europe, I went to see Nicos, and I said, ‘What can you tell me? What’s this crazy Conclave you’re planning?’ and, guess what? He told me. He told me everything that’s about to go down, and—I gotta tell you—I was rocked to the very core of my being. Really. Seriously. You faithful, you in the news media, you at home, you’re gonna be rocked to the core of your beings too. It’s that big.” He paused again, playing the crowd like a cheap piano. “So. Without. Further. Ado. I give you… Nicos Nephus!”
Nicos Nephus—or as CoR jargon would have it, “The Messenger”—came out onstage. It was like Mick Jagger mixed with Elvis mixed with the Beatles mixed with Jesus suddenly appeared. I’ve never seen anyone receive a more ecstatic reaction. Elijah and I looked around, stunned at the reception. All the men near us were screaming. All the women were crying. It was unsettling.
Nephus, a huge man with wiry black hair, went over to Taylor Chriss and scooped him up into a bear hug. Chriss laughed, patted Nephus’ biceps and looked at the audience with comic alarm. The audience ate it up. Finally, the leader of the space hippies put the smaller man down and indicated the microphone as if to say, “Are you done? Do you have any more to say?” The movie star aped the gesture. “It’s your turn”.
I squinted. All I could tell was Nephus looked more or less the way he did in photos and on television. He was a burly Greek with a broad grin. “Wow,” he said. “I hope I can live up to that introduction.”
I’ve never heard so many people laugh at the same time. In another context, it might’ve sounded like the war cry of an invading army.
Nicos wasn’t through working the crowd. “Improbable Pursuit 6: In a theater near you, March 19th, 2019.” After the uproar died down, the big man grew quieter, more affectedly thoughtful. “You know—I don’t have to tell you this—that one of the cornerstones of our philosophy is that we’re not alone in the universe. You’ve no doubt been referred to as ‘Space Hippies’. Well, I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: Wear that like a badge of honor. ‘I’m a space hippie, and damn proud of it!’” Another deafening ovation. “I’ve always appreciated your willingness to hear me out on this issue. For years, it bothered me that I couldn’t offer you proof of my claims about extraterrestrial life. Such is the problem will all matters of faith—they’re matters of faith and easily discounted. That changes today.”
As soon as he said it, stagehands rolled two cylinders onto the stage and parked them behind him. The objects were about six feet tall and made of a dull black metal. The crowd grew hushed. Elijah and I both leaned in.
“Before I show you what I’ve got, please indulge me in a little… scriptural review. We in the Church of Reciprocity believe that, not only are we not alone in the universe, the universe is teeming with life. Life in thousands of shapes and sizes. Maybe even in the shape and size of this wacky guy behind me.” He cocked a thumb in the direction of Bloop and the crowd laughed. The cult leader went on. “Out there… there’s an unending menagerie of wonders in which we humans play a humble but necessary part. Yes, the universe is alive, but we space hippies tend to focus on a few species as being more important than the others—important in th
e development of homo sapiens. We call these special beings The Visitors. They came here, and they boosted us out of the muck. They nurtured us and gave us the tools to join them amongst the stars.”
Where the fuck was this headed? It was like the build-up at a magic show.
“You’ve read my writings. You’ve heard me speak. You know that one of those paternal races took on human form to better interact with us. You know they made their home in ancient Greece. You also know their names… Zeus. Hera. Apollo. Aphrodite. Artemis. Hades.”
Uh oh. There was a bit of space hippie trivia I was unaware of. El gave me an odd look. “Are you from space?” he said.
“No, I’m not from fucking space,” I replied.
We both returned our attention to the man on stage. “Great, nurturing beings with powers far beyond those of mortal men. As I told you in the past, when their time was done, the Olympians took their leave. They didn’t depart on spaceships. Rather they passed into another realm of existence.”
Huh. That was actually true. Did Nephus have some inside sources?
“Anyway, most of them did.” The guru reached into his pocket and took out a little clicker. Like everyone else there, I was hanging on his every word. He clicked the clicker.
The front face of both of the cylinders rolled around to the back, revealing glass and two glow-y figures beyond. Each cylinder held an Olympian. An Olympian I recognized. Stage left was Hephaestus and stage right was Hecate. The god of the forge and the goddess of magic. Both of them had seen better days. They were spectral and sickly, their eyes sunken. They appeared to be floating in viscous blue fluid.
The crowd gasped at Nephus’ reveal. News cameras fought one another for a closer view.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Hephaestus and Hecate, two of the remaining Greek Visitors. Look at them with reverence and awe. They were among the midwives of our culture. The creatures that lifted us up, so we could fly.”
