Bio-magnetic fields are generated by the atoms of which we are made. These atoms date to the origin of the universe. All hydrogen atoms were produced in the big bang, while heavier atoms such as carbon and oxygen were forged in stars between 7bn and 12bn years ago. These atoms never touch. The closer they get to each other, the more repulsion there is between their electrical charges, causing them to vibrate. It is these vibrations that generate the magnetic fields with which we work.
He clicked on the ‘Training’ page. Eight audio files, twelve PDFs, titles ranging from ‘Neuroplasticity and Genetics’ to ‘Precognition: Accessing the Future’. He opened a few at random. They seemed to be a mix of articles lifted from academic journals, some authored by the research committee of the Bridge Foundation, some papers by Professor A. Majorana himself. He was feeling the heat of it now; getting closer.
One caught his eye. It came from a US military base: Fort Meade, Maryland. ‘Controlled Remote Viewing’.
‘It’s CIA research,’ Maya said.
‘Do you think it’s authentic?’
‘I don’t see why not. They were doing a lot of pretty cranky stuff in the sixties and seventies, weren’t they?’ She read aloud: ‘“A channel exists whereby information about a remote image or location can be obtained by means of a developed perceptual modality. Current research identifies electromagnetic bio-fields as the likely conduit.” Brilliant. They thought you could train people to go and spy on Soviet bases just using the power of the mind.’
‘Did they manage?’
‘What do you reckon. Listen to this: “As with all biological systems, the information channel will be initially imperfect, containing noise along with the signal. It may be that remote perceptual ability is widely distributed in the general population, but because the perception is generally below an individual level of awareness, it is repressed or not noticed.” Right.’ She clicked a sound file. Belsey crashed back on the beanbag and listened. Nothing happened. Maya turned her speakers up. The room filled with a droning sound. She tried another track and it appeared to be identical.
‘Nothing livelier?’ Belsey said.
‘It’s binaural beats. You’re meant to listen to them on headphones so you get a slightly different tone in each ear. It produces a third frequency inside your mind which influences brainwaves, takes you down to low-delta brain frequencies.’
‘Sounds fun.’
‘According to this, if we hit the right frequency we can start increasing our cognitive ability.’
‘To the extent that we can see things remotely.’
‘Exactly. Want to try?’
‘I want some proper information: names, places, money. Something slightly more bound to reality.’
Maya went quiet for a while, kept clicking. Until she hit something.
‘There’s a protected area.’
Belsey got up and came over. The folder was entitled ‘Level Three Only’.
‘It asks for another authorisation code,’ Maya said. ‘I can give it a try. But it will take a bit.’
Belsey printed a selection of documents to read while she worked. These came from a folder called ‘Timeline’ and lent the group a more political edge. They involved report after report on deforestation, climate change, disease. He was on his third article about the global population crisis when Maya gave a whoop.
‘Here’s your proper information,’ she said. The screen was filled with files carrying individuals’ names and dates of birth. She opened a couple. Each contained what looked like results from a full medical: BMI, cardio, eyesight, speed-of-response tests.
‘Who exactly are these people?’
Belsey took the mouse and scrolled down to the end of the members’ personal files, to a folder entitled ‘Guide Materials for Advanced Trainees’. This contained an eye-catching selection of papers: ‘Mission Preparation and Pre-Launch Operations’, ‘Sleep-Wake Cycles and Light Exposure During Spaceflight’, ‘Neurocognitive Performance in Microgravity’. Maya gave a low whistle.
Belsey opened a document on Space Motion Sickness. ‘Space Motion Sickness is an event that can occur within minutes of being in changing gravity environments. These range from 1g on Earth to more than 3g during launch, and then from microgravity in space to hypergravity during re-entry.’
‘Space cadets,’ Maya said.
‘So it seems.’
A final folder contained wave-form graphs. They looked like more cardio readings, EVG graphs, but no subjects named this time.
‘What is that?’ Belsey asked. Maya squinted at the screen.
She took the mouse and started clicking through. Page after page of what looked like heat maps, abstract shapes with red cores, pixellating out through yellow and green to blue and then black. ‘This is astronomical research. Spectroscopic data,’ she said. ‘Measurements of, like, stars and galaxies.’ She clicked back to the homepage, the map of Europe, tapped the screen. ‘I bet you these orange dots are all locations of radio telescopes.’
‘Really?’
‘Just wait. I’m a geek for this.’
She went online, brought up another webpage.
‘This is all LOFAR data,’ Maya said. ‘The Low-Frequency Array for radio astronomy. It’s a network of radio telescopes, thousands of antennae all linked.’
‘Go back to the map.’
Maya clicked back.
‘See this. It’s a research centre near Spier, in Holland.’ Belsey pointed to the location. ‘Is that on the network?’
Maya brought the LOFAR window back up. Spent a minute searching.
‘Got it. That’s ASTRON. The Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. But these telescopes, they’re a completely different thing to your Bridge Foundation. It’s not about physically getting people into space. It’s stargazing.’
Now Belsey clicked back, through the Level Three materials on space travel to the ‘Timeline’ page, with its reading list for a sick planet. It was starting to make sense.
‘They’re not really training astronauts, are they?’ Maya asked.
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Is it a joke?’
‘I don’t think it’s a joke, exactly. What’s eclosis?’
‘What?’
‘There’s a folder there named “Eclosis”.’
‘No idea.’
‘Useless.’
He opened a new window, ran a search. Eclosis was the process by which a butterfly emerged from a chrysalis.
‘Great,’ Maya said. ‘Now we know.’
Belsey closed the window and opened the file. It contained a countdown timer, currently at 29 hours, 55 minutes. It clicked down to 54 minutes as they watched.
‘That’s weird,’ Maya said. She took the mouse and returned to the main page. Her face fell. ‘Someone knows we’re in.’
She lifted her hands off the keyboard. Files were disappearing, being deleted before their eyes.
‘Save what you can,’ Belsey said.
She put a USB in the hard drive and copied the last few files as the Bridge Foundation sunk back into secrecy.
32
THEY MANAGED TO SAVE TWELVE documents. Belsey took the flash drive, promised Maya a place on the first shuttle out of here and returned to his car. The afternoon was greying into evening. He waited for sirens to pass, then drove north to Eversholt Street, spent twenty quid printing sheets off the USB at an internet café in Mornington Crescent and took them to a pool hall at the junction with Hampstead Road. It was owned by the same Kurdish gang as the rest of the bars nearby, all part of one money-laundering operation. Which suited Belsey fine right now. They knew him; they weren’t going to be answering the door to any other police too quickly.
He climbed the stairs, got a steroid-enhanced hug from Afran, the manager, asked for a table at the back. The light came on over the furthest table. Belsey kept the cover on, spread the notes. He separated the sheets into piles and tried to figure out what he was up against.
He started wit
h a directory: ‘For group contact only’. It listed fifteen groups in ten countries: seven in Europe, then India, Australia and Russia. Individual membership lists within the groups were anonymised, only initials given. There were fifty or so per group. Phone numbers were listed, as were professions; they included lawyers, journalists, government officials.
Each group had a director, sitting on top of a hierarchy of management. Budgets were listed, along with holdings running into the millions, mostly involving land and property. It all looked worldly enough. But then he looked at Majorana’s papers again. They hit a different note entirely.
What we commonly call depression is the felt pressure and weight of our own unactualised life potentials. As trainees, we do not deny the experience but let it press us down into ourselves and help us reach our own deeper fields.
To reduce essential pain to evident pain is to deny the essential nature of this planet: that it is a world of essential pain, a world that has constantly to disguise itself as a realm of opportunities for the purchase of temporary pleasure.
As pain in an individual signifies new understanding, so there is pain that accompanies a new epoch. We live amongst it.
Be in this world but not of it.
His other lectures to devotees included: ‘On Tertiary Evolution’, ‘Beyond Psychological Time’, ‘How the Vanguard Prepare’. The vanguard prepared by developing their control of ‘the bio-magnetic fields’. This was a knowledge passed between several ancient civilisations, encrypted in their writings but lost in modern times. ‘Bio-magnetic fields’ allowed an individual to reconnect with the universe, transcending limitations of time and space to explore other dimensions. These fields could also be used to assess the health of one’s personal energy store. Bridge recruits were expected to purify themselves of Earth’s negativity so that, wherever they settled next, it would be uncontaminated. Which was a nice idea.
So far, the Foundation had discovered five consecutive ‘fields’. There was the physical one; then the ‘Emotional Body’ – the layer dealing with emotional responses such as love, hatred, envy, loneliness. The third field was the ‘Mental Body’, where all our memories and belief patterns could be found. These were stored as small crystalline energy forms, observable psychically. They revealed the hidden personality traits of an individual. ‘It is through regaining control of the third layer that we can learn to broadcast a powerful magnetic energy signature to others.’
‘Magnetic energy’ rang a bell. Belsey took his phone out, opened the browser, typed: ‘Positively Happy Survey. What’s stopping you living the life you want to lead?’ It appeared right away: the test Amber and Mark had both been so interested in: ‘Find out how to become the most attractive version of yourself and be magnetic in personal and business relationships. Are you amongst the 3 per cent of the population with a High-Receptive Personality?’
Belsey thought it was time he found out. The site informed him that the test took ‘no more than twelve minutes’ to complete. ‘Answer honestly.’ It gave him a list of statements and told him to mark them on a scale of 1 to 5 according to how much he agreed:
You don’t usually initiate conversations.
You feel a constant need for something new.
Your dreams tend to be vivid.
In groups and parties you place yourself nearer to the side than in the centre of a room.
It got deeper:
You sometimes stand close to a person and begin to feel anxious for no reason.
You see images, faces or objects in your mind’s eye and don’t know what it means.
You have put your hands on someone to help ease pain.
Belsey graded all thirty statements. It asked for his email address to receive results. He gave the anonymous address he used for porn sites, clicked send. A minute later he checked his inbox. An email had come through from [email protected]: ‘Congratulations! You are in the top 3 per cent of respondents to this survey. As data is sensitive we must ask you to conduct the subsequent process in confidence. If you are interested in undergoing the next steps towards self-transformation please reply “Yes” to this email address.’
Belsey replied ‘Yes.’
An auto-response pinged back: ‘Thank you for your interest in this ground-breaking experiment.’ Attached was a non-disclosure and confidentiality agreement asking for his electronic signature. ‘This agreement is made on the date of the last signature below, between i) The Bridge Foundation, 8 Avenue du Mervelet, Geneva; ii) Nick Belsey (please confirm if details are correct).’ The Bridge Foundation address didn’t exist: there was no 8 Avenue du Mervelet in Geneva. Belsey confirmed his details were correct and sent it back. It was only when he’d clicked send that he realised he’d never given them his name.
He took a beer, watched the islands of baize across the pool hall. Read on, learnt about the final two ‘fields’.
What we term the Spiritual Body is the fourth layer of our bio-magnetic field, which is like a giant storehouse of information regarding our past, present and future deeds.
The fifth layer is our Astral Body, the form in which we overcome the last terrestrial boundaries. As we progress beyond self we dispose of emotions such as guilt and self-doubt in order to discover new sources of power. Centuries of religion and politics have encouraged us to retreat into the smallest forms of ourselves. We shelter inside a familiar shell of identity. This is easy, even if it causes us pain. Energy rebounds, causing mental and physical illness, inhibiting our power to transform.
If you want success, harness the energy of the future. Become a chrysalis, as Earth itself is a chrysalis in which the future is being born.
A chrysalis.
Belsey took Chloe Burlington’s necklace from his pocket, held the glass pendant up to the light. That was what it was: a chrysalis. Like an elongated acorn, but not quite symmetrical. He saw the very faint lip a third of the way down where it began to gently taper. He admired the craftsmanship, wondered who was producing them. Did this Majorana get a job lot? Someone in China knocking them out on demand? Did you receive it when you signed up, a free gift – or were you given it at a graduation ceremony? He put it back in his pocket, stepped out to the fire escape.
The evening was mild. He lit a cigarette and looked at the street below. Three teenagers hung out beside the bus stop, hoods up, bikes aslant. Two homeless men sat on the shelter’s bench, pooling their small change, peering into each other’s hands like they were comparing collections of something exquisite. Then the windows of the three tower blocks by Hampstead Road, gaining visibility against the evening sky. Boxes, stacked. A neat, modular storage system for oddly shaped lives.
Lonely lives. As police you see inside the homes no one else sees. You see what isolation means. You start to understand the power of company. Nocturnal London was a city of hidden congregations, refusing to feel ashamed. Of pubs like the Crown in which Borough CID crammed itself, men sinking their guilt into a communal pool. Other groups praying together or trying to stay sober; gambling or trying not to gamble. Turning their backs to the world. Warming themselves off shared secrets.
In the third layer of the bio-magnetic field we store our experiences, memories and belief patterns, crystalline energy forms which can be observed psychically . . .
Belsey saw the Crown. Hard to leave a group. Hard to step away, as the distance between identities stretches. Your old life on one side, the truth on the other. Every group’s a trap. It happened with police. Old friends grew distant, you found yourself cutting ties, seeking out the company of those who’d understand. You sunk yourself in – into the most faithless cult around – curious about where it led. Then part of you was owned. That was the problem. The Bridge Foundation didn’t quite get it. Your truth wasn’t written in the cosmos, it was in the memories of the bastards you were drinking with when you thought you could get away with anything.
Everything’s going to come out about Borough . . . Only you’re so fucked yourself
he thinks he can shut you down.
Sometimes it’s not the obvious moments that get caught in memory. The incident that came to mind most often wasn’t the messy end of Borough CID or one of the interminable benders with tabloid hacks and various exotic hangers-on, but a more routine night somewhere in between. He and McGovern, first at the scene of a road traffic accident on their way back from interviewing the owner of a string of brothels. Saturday night, all other police elsewhere, the two of them kneeling in the centre of the Old Kent Road, scooping teeth out of a woman’s mouth so they could perform CPR. He remembered spitting her blood onto the tarmac as they took turns. It was twenty minutes before an ambulance arrived. She died. They went home. McGovern had just separated from his wife and was trying hard, for once, to stay dry. Belsey got home and thought of McGovern returning with the same taste in his mouth. He hadn’t answered his phone when it rang. He thought: that’s Geoff, and he didn’t answer. He couldn’t imagine what conversation they’d have.
There were other moments that challenged the story he usually told himself. Heart-to-hearts, lock-ins; their first drink together, when he retained some awe, and it took six pints for McGovern to try explaining something, and Belsey realised he was saying: Get out of Borough – don’t stick around, it’s rotten and it will suck you in. And he’d been offended by that, as if his tenacity was being questioned.
He finished his cigarette, went inside and looked at his CCTV printouts of the individuals who’d attended the Comfort Hotel, the information he had on their inconspicuous, terrestrial lives. He stared at Mark Doughty – his ponytail and shades. He’s hiding. That was how Maureen Doughty had put it, her last conversation with her son. He remembered Mark’s voice on the phone. Someone trying hard not to sound scared. Somebody stuck in something; some kind of situation where they wanted out?
Belsey thought of the injuries on the Spier woman’s hands. The Mail article. Trying to scale a fence? Maybe succeeding. Getting out. Lost, disorientated. Hard to leave a group; hard for it to end in a civilised fashion. Chloe – Chloe didn’t get the opportunity to walk away. Did Katja? Belsey was trying to see in; but there were others, surely, trying to see a way out.
The House of Fame Page 21
