All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  Linda shivered with vulnerability and closed her eyes, afraid that Obie would touch her stomach, fearful that he would not. “Kind of a good alien/bad alien thing?” she asked, forcing herself to stay in the conversation.

  “From one point of view. The Angels prefer the carrot. The gray ones tend toward the stick. Parenting an adolescent can take both, I think.”

  Obie laid his hand gently on Linda’s belly and she sighed deeply. “It’s been rather more stick than carrot lately, wouldn’t you say?” she murmured.

  “Perhaps,” answered Obie, his genial, lecturing tone at distinct odds with the intimacy of the moment. “You’ve got to remember that they’ve been at this a very long time. Most of those tales of ancient astronauts are based in real events. Various alien beings have been with humans since our very beginning, I’m pretty sure. They show up in cave paintings, religious texts, monuments and megaliths and artifacts, in fairy encounters and abduction scenarios and shamanic journeys. The fact that there are only two groups at this point who are even trying to help is a testament to how frustrated most Strangers have become with us. Most have just given up in disgust, seeing us as hopeless addicts with no chance of survival. Some view us pretty much the same way we view cattle. At this late hour, only the gray ones and the Angels hold much hope for our evolution, as far as I know.”

  Linda looked at Obie. “And why are those guys sticking with us?”

  “I think because they feel responsible for us. And because they believe in our potential.”

  “Meaning…?”

  “Meaning that they were both involved in our earlier evolution, maybe even our creation, to some extent. And because they saw how great was our potential, before the cataclysms.”

  Linda stretched her arms overhead, almost knocking the lamp from the small table beside the futon. Obie reached out with his free hand to steady it. The afternoon sun had swung around to shine in on Linda’s face through the kitchen window. She closed her eyes and let its radiance warm her battered cheeks and raw, puffy eyes. Breathing deeply, she spoke in a low tone. “I don’t know what to do with all of this, Obie. It just gets more and more convoluted. You sound like some crazy website. Like some street-corner nut-job.”

  Obie nodded. “How did you get here?” he asked softly.

  Linda smiled and opened her eyes. “Touché,” she said.

  Obie shared the smile. “Once you’ve ridden in a UFO with a homeless guy and a dead man, Linda, you’ve entered the domain where fundamental assumptions get challenged.”

  “I just didn’t think I’d be challenging them all at once.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Obie closed his eyes and cocked his head, as if listening to some distant voice. After a moment he opened his eyes and continued. “It’s rough. The old, habitual ways of thinking kick back in, even for me, and I’ve had years to soak this stuff up. The Strangers continued my education in their own sporadic, bewildering way. And I tried for years to figure it all out. Reading. Studying. Meditating and journeying and communicating. I’ve seen how much crazy shit is out there. How much disinformation. How much misunderstanding.” Obie got quiet again and began to move his hand in slow, small circles over the skin of Linda’s stomach, as if he were stirring a pot of caramel with a wooden spoon. He lowered his head to listen for a moment, then flashed his eyebrows with excitement. “Of the few who are willing to really look at the alien evidence with an open mind, even fewer are also able to see their own mental and emotional filters, to know and understand how the culture in which they were raised has left them with a full set of insane assumptions and delusional stories.”

  Linda reached out and grabbed Obie’s hand to call a timeout. “You’re losing me here,” she said. She stopped and took a deep breath and closed her eyes, as if to let a sharp pain pass through her body. Obie straightened, placing both of his hands in his lap. After a time Linda raised her head to look at him. “I mean, it’s as if you’re using words I know, but in ways I don’t know. Like … what do you mean by stories? And it sounds as though you’re saying I’m insane, and my people are insane, just because we grew up in this culture. And I’m not all that keen on being called insane, to be honest.” Linda stopped, her brow tight and furrowed in anticipation of words that did not come. She flopped her head back onto her pillow.

  “You don’t think destroying one’s own ecosystem is insane?” asked Obie, his forced smile failing to hide his defensiveness. “Because that’s what we’re doing.”

  “Well … no. Insane is like drooling on your shirt and listening to imaginary friends and stabbing kittens with knitting needles. So no, I don’t think we’re insane.”

  “And yet we’re drooling pesticides on our topsoil and listening to politicians tell us we can grow forever and stabbing feedlot cattle with bolt guns, Mrs. President.”

  “But it’s not because we’re crazy!” said Linda, pointing angrily at her head. “There’s no crazy in here, Obie. Okay? So don’t say there is.”

  Obie nodded. “You’re right,” he said gently. “You’re right.” He closed his eyes and shifted his legs to sit more comfortably on the ottoman, taking a moment to cleanse the room with stillness. Even the wind calmed down a bit, as if in deference. “I’ve obviously got some old stuff going on here,” he said, his voice tinged with regret. He sat and reflected for a full minute. Then he grinned. This smile was genuine. “In a way,” he said, “we who live in this time are a walking tribute to the strength and indomitable spirit of the human animal. Even now, as wounded and confused as we are, having grown up in a culture whose fundamental assumptions stand in direct violation of reality, many of us retain the ability to claw our way out of those cultural delusions and reconnect with the Universe. Even if our egos are battered and bruised, our essential selves are intact. Which may be exactly why some of the Strangers continue to help us.”

  Obie opened his eyes. “Most of us are not insane, if you define the word in terms of brain dysfunction and bad chemicals. You’re right about that. But if we’re not mentally ill, Mrs. President, would you agree that we’re certainly culturally ill? Spiritually ill? Wouldn’t sanity mean being consciously connected to reality, to what’s actually so? And if we start from there, how should we then regard our society? Our culture tells us that all growth is good, even though we say we know that, in physical terms, nothing can grow forever. Our culture tells us that we can fix every problem and control every outcome, even though we can see, if we just look, that most of our solutions simply lead to more problems. Our culture tells us that we will find true happiness through the things we own, that the material world is all there is, and that the rest of the planet is here merely to serve as our resource. Yet we know in our hearts that money does not, and has not, bought us true happiness and fulfillment, only comfort.” As Obie spoke, his voice grew louder, and his eyes glinted, like a televangelist reaching the high point of his sermon. “In this physical plane, Mrs. President, it’s the soil and water and forests and sky and plants and animals upon which our very lives ultimately depend. The structures of civilization cannot exist without those things. And yet we live inside of those structures – houses, offices, stores, factories, cars, roads, subdivisions, cities, whatever – and those structures keep most of us almost totally disconnected from the real world that serves as their foundation. So you might begin to see the benefit of just sitting for a while with the notion that not only is this culture not in touch with reality, but that this insanity lives inside of you.”

  Linda’s face had grown strained and dark as Obie spoke. She held up a hand, drawing in a smooth, even breath, as if to cool her soul. She exhaled and drew another. Slowly her face relaxed. She nodded. “I guess I’m willing to sit with that for a while,” she said slowly.

  Obie nodded in response but did not speak.

  “So these things the culture tells us, these are what you mean by our stories?”

  “Yes,” Obie said. “We learn these stories as children and repeat them as adults. We s
peak our culture into existence with these stories, Linda. So if our stories are insane, then our culture is insane, and our actions inside of that culture are insane.”

  Linda sat quietly, letting Obie’s words sink in further. “And yet I’m still not sure it makes any sense to use that word,” she said. “If I used such language, it would just put people off. They wouldn’t be able to hear me.”

  Obie smiled with grim, tight lips. “Maybe I’m a hard-ass,” he said.

  “And why do you need to be such a hard-ass?” asked Linda.

  “I know it’s possible to wake up,” said Obie, shaking his head as if it were obvious. “I know it’s possible to tell new stories, to create a new culture. And the aliens are just standing there, holding out the keys to the Cosmos. If enough of us—” He stopped and took a breath. “There’s no time,” he said. “We need something to shock us awake….” Obie closed his eyes, pulling his shoulders forward and hunching his back, as if in self-protection. “It’s nuts,” he muttered at last. “And it’s all so fucking unnecessary. If I could only get people—”

  “So maybe that’s part of the insanity, Obie,” cut in Linda, her voice resonant with calm power. She reached out to take Obie’s warm right hand. “Thinking we can force people to wake up and fix everything.”

  Obie sighed. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe there’s something else to do with the truth besides beat people over the head with it.”

  Obie opened his eyes. “Maybe,” he said again.

  Linda gave Obie a warm smile. “Maybe that’s my job, to help find out what that is,” she said at last. She squeezed Obie’s fingers. “Maybe there’s more help available to us than you think.”

  Obie’s eyes moistened, his face flushed. Slowly, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, as if he’d never dared even to wish that help might be available, he straightened his back.

  Linda glanced down at her stomach and gasped. Her belly was smooth and pink. Rice’s bleak, tortured landscape had almost entirely faded from view.

  14.4

  Linda sipped at her tea. “So you don’t know how you do it?” she asked, pointing at her abdomen. She was sitting up on the futon. Her shirt was buttoned. Obie sat across from her on the footstool.

  Obie’s eyes sparked. “I don’t do it,” he said. “That’s what makes it so fun. I get to have a front row seat at the edge of some new paradigm.”

  Linda laughed. “You’re not like anyone else I’ve ever met,” she said.

  Obie smiled and drained his tea, placing his cup on the floor and standing. “You ready for more?” he asked. He pushed the table and lamp to the side and slid the ottoman around to the end of the futon, as if needing no answer. “Where were we?” he asked, sitting and patting the pillow.

  Linda put her cup on the floor and lay back, settling into the cushions. “You were telling me how difficult it was for you, to figure out what’s really going on with the aliens.” She wiggled to get comfortable, pulling the blanket over her legs.

  Obie smiled. “Oh, yeah. Right. It was like, I mean, you should spend some time online, surfing UFO sites. No wonder people just write the whole thing off as nonsense. Only slowly did I begin to discern the signal above the noise, and to understand that my attempts to nail down ‘the truth’ were only getting in the way. Once I gave up that there was one single ‘Truth’ that I could rationally figure out and know, I could begin to open up to a surprising notion: that the Cosmos is made of consciousness and nothing else.” He placed a hand over each of the President’s temples. “I think it’s as Itzhak Bentov said: the universe is so wild and full and diverse that pretty much anything and everything you can say about it is true, if you look at it from a wide enough perspective. Again, it’s ‘all of the above,’ everywhere you look.”

  Linda snorted sardonically. “Okay, then. The universe is made of consciousness and everything is true. Glad we got that one sorted out.” She smiled to show she was teasing. “I think I’ll just let that all sink in for a while, if you don’t mind.” She closed her eyes.

  Obie moved his hands to hover over Linda’s face. “Am I accurate in thinking that your right cheek hurts like hell?” he asked.

  “Jesus, yeah,” said Linda. She opened her eyes to look at Obie. “It’s really tender. How did you know?”

  “Well, in this case, it’s because there’s a faint hand-shaped bruise stretching from your jaw line to just under your eye. I see three fingers, maybe a thumb mark over your upper lip. Rice’s calling card, I’m afraid.”

  Linda had to grip the futon to hold onto herself. “Fucker,” she said.

  “Swelling’s down though. I don’t think anything’s broken.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to thank Mr. Rice for his forbearance, then, won’t we?” Linda’s mood had shifted from camaraderie to loathing. She reached up and caressed her sore cheekbone.

  Obie laid his right hand on top of hers, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. “There will be nothing of Theodore Rice left in you by the time we finish here today,” he said, his voice the low rumble of a thunderhead bearing the promise of a clear, rebalanced sky. “Not if I have anything to say about it. And I do.”

  Linda allowed a few drops of her pain to spill from her eyes and wet their entwined fingers. After a time, she took a deep breath and lowered her hand to her side. There was nowhere to go but forward. “So tell me about this cataclysm stuff you mentioned earlier,” she said huskily.

  Obie nodded, letting his hands continue to explore Linda’s face and scalp, letting his soft, sure voice encircle her with confidence and power. “You understand that what I’m giving you here today is just a bare-bones briefing on a body of information that would fill a library, right?”

  Linda shrugged. “I guess I know it now.”

  “Right.” Obie chuckled sympathetically. “So, I think for our purposes here, what I can say is that the Earth had been working all along just as it was designed to work, fostering the evolution of matter through ever-increasing levels or bands of consciousness, ever-higher frequencies if you will, sorting and sifting and pushing and pulling and starting over again and again, drawing the created world ever closer to the Absolute.” Obie laid his hand briefly on the large lump on the top of Linda’s head, leaned in to listen for a moment, then moved on. “The Earth had brought many individuals, and some small groups, to such highly refined frequencies of sensitivity and consciousness and self-reflection that they were approaching that point where they could become creatures of the Cosmos, the very co-creators God is always seeking. And I’m not talking about just humans here. There are other species on that same trajectory, some of the toothed whales being obvious examples.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Now, in a way, I’m reiterating the old notion of the scala naturae, the Great Chain of Being, the classical and medieval hierarchical structuring of the Universe. It’s a notion that has been harshly critiqued in recent decades, as the destruction of the planetary ecosystem has become so glaringly obvious. The fear is that if we see ourselves as somehow ‘higher’ than the rest of creation, then we will use that as justification for the continuing exploitation, enslavement, and slaughter of the rest of the living beings on this planet, from the minerals and waters to the trees and animals and everything in between.”

  Obie put a hand on Linda’s shoulder. “Can I get you to roll onto your left side?” he asked. Linda twisted to her left, then pushed back toward the futon’s edge, her back to the room. Obie leaned over to put his right ear just above hers. “It’s certainly an understandable fear, given that this has, in fact, happened,” he continued in a low voice, “but one that propels these critics too far in the opposite direction, in my opinion. The problem I see lies not so much with the notion of a Great Chain, as that the chain has lost its sacred underpinnings in this era of civilization. The notion of the evolutionary nature of the Universe, hiding in such words as ‘progress’ and ‘history,’ when combined with the blindness o
f materialism, the dominate-and-exploit mandate of the culture of Empire, and the psychopathologies of those in power, has resulted in a major clusterfuck of a mess here on planet Earth.”

  Obie stopped and pulled back, as if he’d been burned. “Whoa!” he said. “I felt that.”

  Linda craned her head to look at him. “Felt what?” she asked.

  “You’re on fire.”

  Linda stared at him without responding. Her face was beginning to redden.

  “You’re not really grokking this, are you?” he asked.

  Linda flushed. “Screw you and your Reader’s Digest condensed version of reality, Obie,” she said angrily. “I’m not a stupid person, you know.” Her eyes flashed with the power of self-knowledge.

  “I’ve never thought you were,” agreed Obie, shaking his head.

  Linda turned back, her face almost buried in the futon cushion. “Just … give me a minute, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Linda closed her eyes and took a series of long, deep breaths. “You really piss me off when you talk like that,” she said at last. “It’s like … you’re rewriting the entire history of the world and then expecting me to just get it. Like you’re giving me one of those packet things you talked about. Only you’re not. And I’m still reeling from having arrived here in a UFO with my dead—” Linda stopped, choking on her grief.